It is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones. The main reason we don’t make meetings more productive is that we don’t value our time properly. The people who call meetings and those who attend them are not thinking about time as their most valuable resource.
David Andersen
on 19 Jan 09A lot of people don’t care because they are locked into a 8 hour workday and it’s a way to kill time and socialize.
Sean
on 19 Jan 09They get paid the same whether the meeting lasts 2 hours or 4 hours. It doesn’t matter to that employee if the project falls behind schedule or certain things don’t get done because of longer than expected meetings. It matters to the owner of the business, but not to the employee. The employee makes the same salary regardless.
It’s easy to waste time thats not yours just like it’s easy to spend money thats not yours.
Chad Garrett
on 19 Jan 09Very funny. It looks like corporate America really does live just like 37signals. The only difference is that the 4-day work week takes 5 days with all the meetings.
jc-Qualitystreet
on 19 Jan 09Value… feedback and adaptation ! Adopt the Lean Thinking and try a ROTI (Return on Time Invested) for your meetings.
It is a quick and easy method to gauge the time spent on meetings or workshops, and to improve their effectiveness. Here is a description and the scale: http://www.agile-ux.com/2009/01/09/return-on-time-invested-a-roti-for-your-meetings/
I use the Return On Time Invested technique intensively (meetings, workshops), it works very well, even with top management.
This is the end of useless meetings !
Josh Delsman
on 19 Jan 09I really wish I were in charge of planning the meetings I attend sometimes. One of the problems that I notice is that a lot of the time, agendas aren’t used. Were we to have an agenda, and stuck to it, we’d be out of the meetings a lot sooner, and with a lot more to speak of from said meeting.
Oh, well. C’est la vie. :)
Eric Ferraiuolo
on 19 Jan 09Reminds me of the Managing Humans book.
Vern Eastley
on 19 Jan 09Regarding the rationalization that “I get paid the same either way”...
That is how the living dead behave.
Never allow anyone to waste your life by claiming it’s company time. Time spent working for an employer is still irreplaceable time from your own life. Value each minute as much as any other. If you want to learn and accomplish anything meaningful you must value every minute of your life.
If you are unable to repair a culture destructive to your life, you either have to die inside every day or go find/create an environment worth living in.
Jason
on 19 Jan 09It’s the difference between the people who think, “Yay, it’s almost Friday!” and those who think, “I wish I had a little more time to work this week!”
Neither is a perfect way to look at your work-life, but you can definitely tell those who are hour-oriented from those who are project-oriented. Here’s to being the latter!
Joe S
on 19 Jan 09Not all meetings are created the same. Some are useless, but some are absolutely critical to the success of a project. Also, not all projects are the same. Small-scale software projects (i.e. 37S products) can be done almost entirely remotely, in The 37Signals Way. However, other cross-discipline, larger projects may not be accomplished this way, and should not be just to prove a philosophy works.
Read Shmula’s thoughts on communication breakdowns in larger teams. I think he’s spot on.
http://www.shmula.com/385/obeya-communication-breakdown
Michal
on 19 Jan 09It’s scary… because I ve end up in place where it is normal to me to calculate project in the flowing way 1 person = 1 day = 4 – 6 hour of effective work… Why?
Chris Samoiloff
on 19 Jan 09Hmmmm. I work for a company that has project deadlines. If meetings take up too much of our time, our work time starts cutting into our home life/leisure time. There is no saying “sorry, too many meetings, I wasn’t able to get my work done.” And funny thing is, people are working during meetings at my company precisely because of this and so meetings are even LESS productive than they could be. Insanity. But I think I prefer that to locking into an 8-hour workday mentality where I don’t care how much time meetings take up.
Vern, I love your philosophy. It is spot on.
Chris
Sean Iams
on 19 Jan 09@Vern AMEN!
Mimi
on 19 Jan 09we don’t have meetings, we have briefings. Rarely do they involve more than 2-3 people at once. By the nature of the term “briefing,” they rarely last more than 5 minutes. There’s only 25 people here, but still, we figure we save at least 10 hours of everyone’s time by not having meetings.
Mimi
on 19 Jan 09That’s 10 hours a month saved. (Should have previewed.)
Nathan Gielis
on 20 Jan 09@Vern, could not have expressed it better myself. Well said.
Mark
on 20 Jan 09As a professor of 8 years, I’ve seen how academe loves to waste valuable time in meetings…they LOVE to have meetings. I recall the wise self-publishing guru, Dan Poynter, wrote that he hated meetings as well, and thought that the best companies were those with a “participatory dictatorship” model: Less meetings, more responsibility. Most companies and institutions have moved far from this sage advice by trying to satisfy the time-wasting egalitarian ‘everyone-should-have-an-equal-say’ creed. Stop wasting your lives. I’m glad that now, as an adjunct professor, my duties (and pay!) are substantially less than before, and I can skip the mind-numbing meetings and work on my own projects. Great posting; keep up the great topics!
pwb
on 20 Jan 09The funny thing about meetings is that they are like gasses: they expand to fill their containers.
Chris
on 20 Jan 09I don’t mind them. Sometimes women go to meetings wearing skirts and stuff.
cp
on 20 Jan 09If you want to speed up a meeting, remove the chairs.
GeeIWonder
on 20 Jan 09Professor or no Professor, it seems to be that, in addition to not being very correct, this is also not terribly novel.
I think there are many organizations, including some cornerstones of democracy, that could use considerably more meetings.
and far too many poorly designed ones
I would argue that far too many meetings have poor chairs or, put another way, are chaired by the wrong people. cp’s comment puts a whole new meaning on that.
As a professor of 8 years, I’ve seen how academe loves to waste valuable time in meetings…they LOVE to have meetings [...] best companies were those with a “participatory dictatorship” mode.
I’m sure it sounds good to say this stuff, but think about that train of thought for a second if you will.
Daniel Massicotte
on 20 Jan 09They ARE a complete waste of time…I did an internship a few months back and found that by not attending meetings and talking too much at the office, I was able to get my entire work day done within 2-3 hours.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Jan 09@Josh
“One of the problems that I notice is that a lot of the time, agendas aren’t used. Were we to have an agenda, and stuck to it, we’d be out of the meetings a lot sooner”
Josh, about meetings there’s a rarely used but valuable saying: if you don’t know what the meeting is about, you shouldn’t be attending. The first time I heard this I reacted negatively to it, but after a few years of being a manager, and after running several small businesses, I’m thinking it makes for a good touchstone.
Jon Dale
on 21 Jan 09Generally speaking, meetings would not only be quicker, but more productive if laptops were not allowed.
If it’s a show and tell, then just bring one.
There have been too many times where I’ve been in a situation discussing something, and I glance round the table and everyone is looking at their laptop and not “listening”.
Keith
on 21 Jan 09I tend to disagree. Meetings are vital to the success of a business. The problem isn’t meetings it is how they are planned, managed, and followed-up after the meeting has ended.
Most meetings are, “Come to room x and time y to discuss topic z.” People go in and chat for 20 minutes, cover a few cursory points, and then leave.
Ideally a meeting should say, “We are having a meeting in room x for 1 hour. We are discussing topic y following the attached agenda. I will take notes, Jim will keep time, and Sam will follow-up with us in 2 business days to see if the action items we created are being performed.”
Structure. Topic. Accountability. Most meetings lack these three core elements and therefore are useless, pointless, and not effective. That’s not the fault of the meeting itself. It’s the fault of the planner.
Since adopting the stated format at my work our meetings have been much more succinct and productive in terms of people walking away with tasks that support the topic of the meeting.
slabounty
on 22 Jan 09@Keith has it about right from my perspective.
I’d also like to add that as companies grow, meetings become more important. It’s much easier to say no meetings when you’re a company of 10 than 100 than 1000. With 10 people, you probably talk to pretty much everyone every day on every subject. In that environment, important things tend to bubble to the top pretty quickly. In larger places, this is simply not true.
Mader
on 26 Jan 09How true that those who call meetings and those who attend meetings are challenged with valuing time. If you think of calling a meeting similar to levying a tax on your co-workers, you think twice before sending the meeting invite.
Read a bit more on IPT (Individual Productivity Tax) and how you can help minimize it here: http://www.smartsheet.com/productivity/chapter7
This discussion is closed.