I’m sick of meetings and I know many other folks are, too. Every time a knowledge worker (such as IT or cybersecurity but also business) has to go to a meeting, there’s a context switch. Each context switch results in a loss of productivity. Ergo, the more meetings your folks are attending, the greater the loss of productivity across the organization. Yet, since COVID, we seem to be big fans of meetings, lots of meetings. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not unusual on any given week for over 50% of my work hours to be spent in meetings. Talking to folks across the industry, I’m hearing this is becoming the norm, not the exception.
There’s a lot of advice out there about how to reduce meetings and make them more useful. Some things I find helpful:
- If you don’t have a reason to meet, cancel the meeting.
- If the discussion can be handled asynchronously, such as through Slack or Teams or even email, handle it asynchronously.
- If it’s the review of a doc or some other artifact, post a link to it and ask everyone to handle it that way. Periodically remind folks as the due date comes up. This does mean if you’re trying to eliminate meetings and you get prompted to review docs, etc., you’ve got to do the work.
- If you do have a reason to meet:
- Ensure only the people that need to be there are asked to attend.
- Use optional attendees sparingly. Too many people can derail the meeting.
- Have specific goals to accomplish in the meeting.
- Have an agenda reflective of those goals and stick to it aggressively.
- If it becomes obvious that the meeting isn’t going to accomplish the goals, end the meeting and set up the correct channel to address whatever blockers or issues came up.
- Someone should be taking notes. However, it’s better to do that off-screen. Otherwise, the meeting often becomes about the meeting notes and not the discussion that needs to be had. Here’s why I say that:
- Everyone is watching the person type and the discussion will stall.
- Folks will offer corrections to the one typing and the discussion will stall. Send out a draft afterward and ask for and accept edits.