Too many meetings? Fewer may not be your only, nor best, fix

Another meeting. (Sigh.)

In our work with healthcare teams, there are few shared beliefs that are more widely held than, “We have too many meetings!” And healthcare isn’t alone. When you search “meetings” in the Harvard Business Review archive, 381 magazine articles, 1,016 digital articles, and 4,071 case studies show up. Clearly, we know there’s a problem. So, why have most organizations made so little progress in crafting solutions? It’s likely because the core issue is complex and requires meaningful change.

When companies jump to the conclusion that “too many” is the only problem with meetings, predictable solutions emerge. Believing that reducing supply will reduce demand, organizations try implementing every imaginable version of “No Meeting Zones,” from blocking one-hour-a-day, to one-day-a-week, to flexible versions that vary by moon phases. (I’m joking … but not by much.) Because the underlying demand for meetings still exists, the forced solution doesn’t work and quickly gets ignored and eventually abandoned.

So, if an organization believes that employees are truly wasting too much time in meetings, we suggest pursuing a straightforward improvement model we call B.L.F. — better, leaner, fewer.

Start by making meetings better

Recognizing that there are legitimate reasons to schedule both ad hoc and standing meetings, the initial step in improvement should be to make them better, not simply abandon them. Following are three key principles for making meetings better for everyone.

Start with “why”

Borrowing an important philosophy popularized by author and thought-leader Simon Sinek, smart leaders think about the purpose of the meeting first. For meeting conveners, considering the “why” helps answer the questions of “what” (a meeting vs. alternative ways to connect with the team) and “how” (the structure of the meeting itself).

The core goals of meetings fall into one of four broad categories:

• Getting and giving information
• Making decisions
• Creating and sharing ideas
• Building relationships

Considering which of these overall goals apply to any given meeting, then building the agenda to achieve them helps function define form.

Plan ahead

Sometimes meetings feel like a random group of people wandered into a room and haphazardly started a conversation. That’s what happens when a leader doesn’t put the needed time and attention into planning and successfully choreographing the meeting. The following is an abbreviated list of the advice we give to participants in our leadership workshops:

1. Set specific and realistic goals and objectives for each meeting.
   • Prepare and distribute a written agenda several days before the meeting so that staff can come prepared to discuss relevant issues.
   • Allocate time for each agenda item as appropriate.
2. Judiciously manage time to be respectful of staff.
   • Start on time.
   • Stay on time.
   • End on time.
3. Start strong.
   • Outline specific goals for the meeting.
   • Briefly review and gain agreement on the agenda.
4. Allocate significant time for staff participation and input.
   • Two-way communication makes staff meetings dynamic and encourages future attendance.
   • Active participation increases employees’ understanding of issues and their buy-in to changes in practice.
5. End strong.
   • Summarize key points and decisions discussed during the meeting.
   • Clarify questions/issues surrounding those points.
   • Assign/clarify responsibility for follow-up in the Action Register.
   • Distribute brief, bullet-point minutes of points discussed during the staff meeting for employees who could not attend.

Help managers be great meeting facilitators

Too often, managers think about “running a meeting” instead of “facilitation a discussion.” There is a degree of skill involved in effective facilitation, and smart organizations provide the training and support leaders at all levels need to master these skills.

Strive to make meetings leaner

Isn’t it funny that we assume one hour is the ideal amount of time for any meeting? Here’s a news flash: it isn’t! Smart leaders shift their default meeting length from 60 to 30 minutes as a starting point. (It’s easy to automate this by changing your default meeting length in the Calendar setting of Outlook as shown in the graphic below.) After developing the first draft of the agenda, they decide whether half an hour is too long or too short and adjust accordingly.

The discipline of making meetings leaner isn’t just about saving time; it’s about developing the discipline to make meetings more efficient and effective for everyone.

End up with fewer

The effect of the discipline we’ve described above is that leaders learn to avoid meetings that either aren’t going to be productive or could be handled in another way (like an email containing straightforward information everyone needs).

Leaders also learn that there are sometimes better ways to connect than around a conference room table. Leadership rounding in the trenches to gain staff members’ thoughts on a pending issue or opportunity, for example, may be a far more efficient way to gain information and ideas than putting people in a closed room.

Like any improvement opportunity in operations, making meetings less burdensome and frustrating doesn’t happen easily or by accident. But given the collective cost of putting people in meeting rooms too often or without good reason means the goal of making meetings more efficient and effective is a smart, worthy one for organizations to pursue.