By: Jillian Miller - 03-05-2010 - (3) Comments - World of Business

The Problem
Do you find yourself having to attend more than 2, 3 or even 4 meetings a day?  Do you not have any time to do actual work because your day is inundated with meetings? Well, you’re not alone. It has become the norm in today’s society to jam-pack our days with these conference room vortexes. If there is anything to discuss, we throw a meeting. If there is a decision to be made, we throw a meeting. We set up reoccurring weekly meetings and don’t cancel them when there is nothing to talk about. In a former life (my old job) we used to have team meetings in which we would discuss our meetings from that week and share articles on successful meetings. A meeting about meetings?! It was getting out of control. But why? Why are they dominating our days? Why doesn’t anyone see it’s an issue?

Somewhere along the way these gatherings have gone terribly awry. They were established to help us better communicate and be productive but they’ve evolved into the opposite. They are now just another corporate process that we do because, well, we think we need to. People are having too many of them. They are not productive. We have stopped feeling empowered to make decisions outside of meetings. And we’ve become too dependent on meetings being the catalyst to move things forward.

It’s Toxic
A company that has a fresh take on corporate meetings is 37 Signals. The Chicago-based company’s new book, Rework, (which hits stands March 9th) has a full chapter dedicated to meetings and why NOT to have them. The chapter is titled “Meetings Are Toxic”. I love that. Toxic to what you may ask? Well, how about your workflow, your productivity and your creativity for three. As they point out in the book, having meetings breaks up your day into these short segments, which is a huge interruption. Then actual work is left to be squeezed into the open slots. It’s probably scary how much time you truly take to sit, think and DO work if your schedule is packed with meetings.

One of my favorite quotes from Office Space is when Peter says to the Bobs, “I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.” Ok so, his problem may have been a lack of motivation working at Initech, but I think it could apply here too…

Is it Necessary?
My philosophy is as simple as this: If a person is able to make a decision on their own, just do it. If they need to speak to a few people, try and handle it individually. Always ask yourself: Is this meeting really necessary? Can I solve this with a phone call or an email instead? If the answer is no and a meeting is essential, set it up but the meeting needs to be focused, it needs to move forward, and it needs to end.

Here are some tips on making a meeting as efficient as possible:

1. Ask “Who absolutely needs to be there?”. Only invite the decision makers, or people who are directly affected by the topic at hand.  Others can get briefed on it later. The more people in a meeting, the more voices and opinions you have, which turns into drawn out conversations, unrelated tangents, sidebars, etc. And let’s be honest, some people just like to hear themselves talk and can turn a 10 minute meeting into an hour.
2. Keep your eye on the prize – go in with a clear goal and accomplish it. Write that goal up somewhere if possible to keep people on track. Once the goal is reached, meeting adjourned.
3. Designate a leader (if not yourself) to open, steer and close the meeting.
4. Keep it short. If you can’t wrap it up in under 30-45 minutes, it isn’t targeted enough. And if you can wrap in up in 5 minutes, do it! No reason to find something else to talk about just because you blocked off an hour.

So, the next time you go to set-up or accept a meeting, ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary. If it is, keep it small, short and sweet and you’ll be happy when you get to leave work on time that day.