quality of the dialogue

The reason most companies don't face reality very well is that their dialogues are ineffective. And it shows in their results. Think about the meetings you've attended - those that were a hopeless waste of time and those that produced energy and great results. What was the difference? It was not the agenda, not whether the meeting started on time or how disciplined it was, and certainly not the formal presentations. No, the difference was in the quality of the dialogue.

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan 

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 103, 104

Here there is no committee meeting

If there is one rule to remember about work meetings, it might be that they are a necessary evil. They are necessary insofar as organizations need them for proper communication, but they are evil in that they are almost never inherently desirable, and should thus be used as sparingly as possible for the sake of productivity and happiness.

Under ideal circumstances, meetings would be unnecessary. But circumstances are never ideal, at least on this mortal coil—which, come to think of it, might give us something to look forward to in the afterlife. As the poet Edgar Albert Guest wrote in 1920,

When over me the night shall fall,

And my poor soul goes upwards winging

Unto that heavenly realm, where all

Is bright with joy and gay with singing,

I hope to hear St. Peter say,

And I shall thank him for the greeting:

“Come in and rest from day to day;

Here there is no committee meeting!”

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

excessive and unproductive meetings

Excessive and unproductive meetings can lower job satisfaction for several reasons. First, they generally increase fatigue as well as our subjective sense of our workload. You have probably experienced a day of meetings after which you are exhausted and haven’t accomplished much—but where you have gotten a bunch of new assignments. Second, people tend to engage in “surface acting” (faking emotions that are deemed appropriate) during work meetings, which is emotionally draining and correlated with the intention to quit. Finally, researchers have found that the strongest predictor of meeting effectiveness is active involvement by the participants. If you are asking yourself, “Why am I here?” you are not likely to think that the meeting is a good use of your time—which is obviously bad for your work satisfaction.

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

the mere urgency effect

Another motive for meetings is what some scholars call the Mere Urgency effect, in which we engage in tasks—such as a meeting where each person recites what they’re working on, whether others need that information or not—to help us feel like we are accomplishing something tangible. If your spouse asks you, “What did you do at work today?” and you answer, “I had six meetings,” this might be why.

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

a huge waste of time

If you, like many people, think work meetings are a huge waste of time, that might be because most meetings keep employees from, well, working: One survey of 76 companies found that productivity was 71 percent higher when meetings were reduced by 40 percent. Unnecessary meetings waste $37 billion in salary hours a year in the U.S. alone, according to an estimate by the software company Atlassian. And in case you’re wondering, COVID made things worse: The number of meetings required of employees has risen by 12.9 percent on average since the coronavirus pandemic began.

But the real problem with meetings is not lack of productivity—it’s unhappiness. When meetings are a waste of time, job satisfaction declines. And when job satisfaction declines, happiness in general falls. Thus, for a huge portion of the population, eliminating meetings—or at least minimizing them—is one of the most straightforward ways to increase well-being.

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

the best thing is subtraction

Shopify will be eliminating all recurring meetings involving more than two people in a bid to give employees more time to work on other tasks, Kaz Nejatian, vice president of product and chief operating officer at Shopify told employees in a Tuesday email viewed by Fortune.

The changes, which are effective immediately, will also see no events at all scheduled on Wednesdays, while any large meetings involving more than 50 people can only be held on Thursdays between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Big meetings are limited to one per week.

The changes to Shopify’s operating structure will eliminate 10,000 company events or the equivalent of more than 76,500 hours of meetings, a company spokesperson told Fortune.

Nejatian called the policy change a “useful subtraction,” which would free employees from excessive amounts of time currently spent in meetings. In his email to employees on Tuesday, he urged them not to add any meetings back to their calendars for at least two weeks, and to be “really critical” when deciding whether to add a meeting back to schedules at all.

Shopify CEO Lütke referred to the approach as a “calendar purge” in a statement to Fortune.

“The best thing founders can do is subtraction,” he in a recent interview with The Knowledge Project Podcast. “It’s much easier to add things than to remove things. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with that period of time.”

Tristan Bove

"Shopify is axing all meetings involving more than two people in a remote work ‘calendar purge’ that the company itself calls ‘fast and chaotic’," Fortune. Jan. 4, 2023

two pizza meeting rule

Like most successful founders, Jeff Bezos does his best to limit the number of meetings he attends. And when he does need to join one, he wants to make it as efficient as possible.

To do this, he follows a simple rule: He won't set up or attend a meeting if two pizzas won't feed the entire group...

One strategy is to take Bezos' advice and ask if two pizzas could feed the group... Here's my suggestion. Any time you're scheduling a meeting, think critically about who really needs to be there. And if someone only needs to be there to cover one topic within the meeting, you can always start with that topic and allow them to leave after it's been covered.

Nick Sonnenberg

"How Jeff Bezos Used the 2-Pizza Rule to Put an End to Useless Meetings at Amazon: It has nothing to do with pizza and everything to do with money." Inc.com. October 26, 2022

four-question meeting process

Well-organized meetings create fresh thinking and enable better decisions. No bystanders allowed. To accomplish this, Columbia Business School professor Christopher Frank, co-author of Decisions Over Decimals: Striking the Balance Between Intuition and Information, shares a quick four-question process.

1. What is the purpose -- inform or compel?
2. What is the issue in seven words or fewer?
3. Who has already weighed in and what did they have to say?
4. What could surprise me in this meeting?

...The ideal meeting begins before anyone meets. The next time you receive an invite, asking these four questions will save time and enable you to manage the fire hose of requests.

Marcel Schwantes

"Tired of Too Many Meetings? This Brilliant 4-Question Meeting May Be Your Solution: The ideal meeting begins before anyone meets." Inc.com. October 10, 2022

three clear meeting rules to follow

In 2018, Musk sent an email to Tesla employees that outlined, among other things, three clear meeting rules to follow:

1. "Please get [rid] of all large meetings, unless you're certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short."
2. "Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved."
3. "Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time."

Nicholas Sonnenberg

In Just 5 Sentences, Elon Musk Gave Tesla Employees a Masterclass on How to Run Efficient Meetings by Nicholas Sonnenberg. Inc. August 26, 2022

we make a decision

Our Friday merchandising meeting is unique to retailing as far as I can tell. Here we have all these regional managers who have been out in the field all week long - they are the operations guys who direct the running of the stores. Then you have all your merchandising folks back in Bentonville - the people who buy for the stores. In retailing, there has always been a traditional, head-to-head confrontation between operations and merchandising. You know, the operations guys say, 'Why in the world would anybody buy this? It's a dog, and we'll never sell it.' Then the merchandising folks say, 'There's nothing wrong with that item. If you guys were smart enough to display it well and promote it properly, it would blow out the doors.' That's the way it is everywhere, including Wal-Mart. So we sit all these folks down together every Friday at the same table and just have at it.

We get into some of the doggonedest, knock-down drag-outs you have ever seen. But we have a rule. We never leave an item hanging. We will make a decision in that meeting even if it's wrong, and sometimes it is. But when the people come out of that room, you would be hard-pressed to tell which ones oppose it and which ones are for it. And once we've made that decision on Friday, we expect it to be acted on in all the stores on Saturday. What we guard against around here is people saying, 'Let's think about it.' We make a decision. Then we act on it."

David Glass

Sam Walton, Made in America by Sam Walton & John Huey. Bantam Books. 1992. p. 225, 226

the silent have something to say

We've worked hard, spent a lot of money, and dedicated much time to our goal of diversity in our organizations. We want different ideas, perspectives, worldviews, and cognitive diversity. Yet so often, there is still silence coming from many members of our team - not because the quiet employees are lacking ideas, but because there are dynamics playing out under the surface. Either a manager notices this, or they don't. If your managers aren't noticing, then there is no sense in spending another dime on diversity efforts - because they won't pay off. 

If You Are a Manager: In meetings, it is essential to be conscious of who is speaking and how often everyone shares their opinions. Allow time for every member of the team to be able to talk in meetings... In order to ensure that everyone is heard, you may have to call on people directly, or politely ask that someone wait their turn. Conference calls are a particularly fertile breeding ground for silence. 

If You Are an Employee: If you do not speak, your ideas will not be heard. It is that simple... You have a responsibility to participate and share your ideas. Otherwise, you will have to accept that you are creating a work environment that isn't fair for you. Ask your manager to allow you to speak in the meeting or the conference. Advise him or her that you would like to be the first person to present at the meeting this time. Help your colleagues by noticing if someone is remaining silent in a meeting and ask them what they are thinking, even if the manager does not.

Laura A. Liswood

The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity While Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work by Laura A. Liswood. Wiley. 2010. p.146, 147

couldn’t say in the meeting

A final way I tightened up meetings was to discourage people from coming to my office afterward to tell me what they “couldn’t say in the meeting” on account of who was in the room. What kind of leader would I be if I suddenly changed my opinion based on statements from the last person with whom I spoke? When people did come to me after meetings, I explained that because they lacked the guts to speak up, we had just wasted an hour of everyone’s time and would now have to reconvene so that everyone could hear this new input. I only had to do that a couple of times before this baloney stopped. 

David M. Cote

Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term. HarperCollins Leadership. 2020. p. 27

right at the end of a meeting

It’s important to be right at the end of a meeting, not at the beginning. If you embrace that mind-set, you’ll do a lot less talking in meetings, and focus instead on getting others to report facts and air their opinions. I stumbled onto this approach when I first arrived at Honeywell. Realizing I couldn’t trust my board or staff, I became a lot more careful about expressing my opinions up front. Then I realized I was making better decisions because I was allowing for a richer discussion. I proceeded to permanently change how I ran meetings.

David M. Cote

Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term. HarperCollins Leadership. 2020. p. 24

tightening up your calendar

If you haven’t gotten serious about tightening up your calendar, now is the time to start. Do you really need all those meetings? Are there ways to minimize the length of essential meetings and still make progress? I am not against meetings – they are essential for leaders, not least because they help us bring facts to the surface and generate good decisions. At the same time, so many meetings are excessively long, unnecessary, and inconclusive. One of my favorite techniques is to require that teams provide me with a summary page at the beginning of the meeting or beforehand so that I could get the gist of the issue up front as well as the team’s recommendations rather than waiting for the story to unfold.

David M. Cote

Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term. HarperCollins Leadership. 2020. p. 21

x days

You might find the prospect of modeling intellectual rigor for your team or organization daunting. How do you do it with so many demands on your time? For starters, I heartily recommend you dedicate time each month to learning about your business and engaging in unstructured thinking. It’s hard to think, read, and learn when endless meetings clog up your day. I developed a practice of sitting down with my calendar at the beginning of each fiscal year and asking my assistants… to designate two or three days each month as “X” days, during which they wouldn’t schedule any meetings. I’d spend some of those days alone thinking about our businesses. On other X days I’d make impromptu trips to learn about our businesses or pay a surprise visit to a facility. I’d also designate twelve additional days as “growth days,” holding intensive sessions with leadership teams to help them think through various growth or operations initiatives. My staff had to hold these growth days on their calendars as well so that we didn’t have to reconcile our calendars in the event we wanted to schedule a meeting (team members got these days back to use as they pleased if we wound up not holding a meeting that included them). Sometimes I had to schedule meetings on an X day, but anticipating that this would happen, I set aside more of these days at the beginning of the year than needed. 

David M. Cote

Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term. HarperCollins Leadership. 2020. p. 20

declining a meeting invitation

The most important thing when declining a meeting invitation is to monitor the tone of your message and adjust it if necessary. Since written communication lacks nonverbal cues, declining an interview via email, text or messaging app requires a delicate approach. Always aim to be:

Clear: Make sure you say it is definite that you won't attend.

Direct: State why you won't make it.

Polite: Take the time to craft a complete reply. Instead of simply clicking “decline,” including an explanation can better help the meeting organizer understand your decision.

Indeed Editorial Team

How To Decline a Meeting (With Examples). Indeed.com February 22, 2021.

regularly scheduled meetings

Regularly scheduled meetings (staff meetings, progress report meetings, and sales meetings) sometimes seem to be called out of habit or sense of duty rather than need. They’re valuable not only for the information they allow people to share but also for the face time they offer. However, their importance doesn’t necessarily make them interesting. Meeting with the same people in the same room every week to discuss the same topics can get boring, resulting in many empty chairs – and a lack of enthusiasm among the remaining attendees. Here are some ways to keep your regular meetings fresh – and attendance high.

• Regularly review the meeting’s purpose
• Solicit agenda items from the group in advance
• Cancel when there is no reason to meet
• Rotate leadership of the meeting

Martha Craumer

“Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover,” adapted from the “The Effective Meeting: A Checklist for Success,” Harvard Management Communication Letter. March 2001. As quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.

video fatigue

 “Video fatigue” comes from many factors, such as the difficulty of making real eye contact with meeting participants (known as “gaze awareness”). Research by Microsoft shows that concentration begins to fray about 30-40 minutes into a meeting, and that stress begins to increase after about two hours of videoconferencing. 

Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, and Andy Parker

“3 Steps to Better Virtual Meetings,” Harvard Business Review. February 19, 2021

our collective addiction to meetings

Attending too many [meetings] can be  highly stressful and tiring, and both productivity and quality take a hit when employees tune out, become demotivated, and lose valuable heads-down work time. As such, it’s hardly a surprise that managers in one survey reported 83% of the meetings on their calendars were unproductive, or that US-based professionals rated meetings as the “number one office productivity killer.”

But despite what seems to be an overwhelming consensus, endless check-ins, debriefs, all-staffs, and Zoom calls continue to plague the corporate world. What will it take for us to break free from our collective addiction to meetings?

Ashley Whillans, Dave Feldman, and Damian Wisniewski

“The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload,” Harvard Business Review. November 12, 2021

post-game meeting

Confirm key decisions and next steps. Recap what was decided in the meeting, who is accountable for following through, when implementation will occur, and how it will be communicated. You want every attendee to leave the meeting with the same understanding of what was agreed, so there’s little chance of anyone reopening the issues later…

Develop communication points. If a colleague not at the meeting asks an attendee “What happened?” he or she should know what to say. So before you wrap up, put the question to the group. “What are the most important things we accomplished in our time here together?” As the group responds, capture the key points on a flip chart or whiteboard and briefly summarize them. Once you have alignment on what should be communicated to others ask everyone if there are any parts of the discussion that they wouldn’t want to be shared. Some information might be confidential; perhaps some ideas aren’t quite ready for dissemination. Be as specific as possible here so everyone clearly understands what is off limits. Then, as soon as possible after the meeting, send your agreed-upon talking points to everyone in an email. The goal of this exercise is not to give people a script to read from. It’s to provide guidance on the key messages they should convey, and what they should keep to themselves, if asked, so the rest of the organization gets a consistent picture of what went on. After a recent strategy meeting of the top 30 executives at a major technology company, for example, the group decided on these communication points:

• This was not a one-time event, but the beginning of this group coming together as a senior leadership team.
• We talked about our strategy, which is to build a collection of great businesses in strong categories.
• We agreed that each business should focus on driving its own growth, but, where it makes sense, units and functions should leverage each other’s best practices and capabilities. We captured some ideas for how to start doing this and talked about opportunities for leaders to grow and take on new boundary-spanning roles.

 

Bob Frisch and Cary Greene

“Don’t End a Meeting Without Doing These 3 Things,” Harvard Business Review. April 26, 2016 as quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.