Meetings are a waste of time

Ineffective meetings waste time, and they can damage psychological, physical and mental wellbeing too.

• I need to keep my team updated: have a meeting
• I need to gather opinions: have a meeting
• I need to raise my profile with the people above me: find an excuse to have a meeting
• I need to make sure my team are OK: have a meeting

Regular meetings, ad hoc meetings, client meetings, update meetings, strategy meetings, wellbeing meetings, one-to-ones, performance reviews. I called meetings and went to every one I was invited to (FOMO). Before I knew it my diary was full, which made me feel valuable, indispensable and firing on all cylinders. I was a communication dream machine, with a slide deck and ready to travel.

The problem with meetings is that they usually only benefit one person.

Does this sound familiar? Junior people hand a load of information to their manager, then watch their peers do the same for theirs. Then they wait for the managers to decide what the information means. Really, it just cements the hierarchy: managers have the authority, managers know best.

What the research says

Research published in the Journal of Business Research found that around 70% of meetings keep employees from getting their work done. During the pandemic, average meeting length fell by 20%, but the number of meetings each person attended rose by 13.5%.

Vijay Pereira, Professor of Strategic and International Human Capital at NEOMA Business School, surveyed 25,000 people and found that those demanding the most meetings tended to be younger or newly promoted managers, especially men, who were keen to be visible and to signal they were in control.

That control is expensive. A two-hour meeting with 18 people uses roughly the same person-hours as one person's entire working week.

So what happens when you cut meetings? Pereira found that micromanagement fell, stress fell, and autonomy, communication, cooperation, engagement, productivity and satisfaction all improved.

People are sociable and want interaction, so meetings can be good, when they're used sparingly, with purpose, and benefit everyone in the room rather than just the person at the top.

How to do it

Scale back. Be selective about which meetings you call and which you attend. The useful ones tend to be about:

• Reviewing work that's happened (what worked, what didn't, and why)
• Clarifying or validating something (policies, team goals)
• Sharing out work across the team

Even then, does everyone need to be there? Try a no-meeting day. Drop a meeting and see whether anyone notices.

Use other ways to communicate

Keeping the team focused on goals, and aware of what others are doing, matters. Slack and Teams can do a lot of that if you use them properly. You could also switch your daily stand-up to an asynchronous check-in with a set window (9 to 9.30am is common). Have fun with it. I use themes; currently it's football.

Collaborate asynchronously

Brainstorming is great, but get several people in a room and the loudest voices take over (I'm one of them). With a tool like Miro or Mural, you can set the objective and let people add ideas, comment and reflect over a set period. Then use a short meeting to agree a decision. Or, if you're feeling brave, make the decision asynchronously too.

Fewer meetings, better work. If you want help redesigning how your teams work, get in touch.