Death By Meeting
I was recently catching up with two different friends who shared that a big source of work from home fatigue and frustration was that most of the day was spent in meetings.
This was a familiar frustration for me in executive and leadership roles.
There are a couple of different ways to approach this issue. It’s important to be clear about the options before you charge off to a solution.
First – and quite tempting – is to consider how to make all the meetings more efficient and effective. Meeting hygiene, if you will.
You might consider:
Does every meeting begin with a clear purpose? Does everyone invited to the meeting know the purpose? Hint: Does your purpose wander? If the meeting is for reviewing progress or removing roadblocks and a big picture issue arises – like a disagreement about the relative priority of the project – does that get tabled for another part of the meeting or another meeting altogether so that the original purpose can be completed?
Are the decisions on the table clear before the meeting or do they get articulated clearly during the meeting?
Is it clear who has decision rights or how the decision(s) will be made?
Are follow up assignments clear? Who? What? By When?
There are plenty of best practices and meeting standards out there.
If you only tackle meeting hygiene you are likely to end up with a little more space on your calendar (thanks to your new and improved efficient meetings).
And guess what will happen with your newly freed up schedule? ...
People will schedule more meetings.
This is why I recommend we spend at least as much energy – if not more – considering a bigger question:
If I had twice as much responsibility – how would I need to adjust? What would that look like? How would I design today differently to make room for that?
You may start to identify bigger contextual changes:
Who could be more empowered to make decisions or own work without my input?
What alternative ways could I create to get/give information and updates?
How are meetings covering up a lack of alignment, buy in or clarity?
Where are the biggest gaps in trust or understanding?
What conversations do we have repeatedly?
How are competing priorities creating friction and can we find a win for all?
Who is missing the skills to step up into more and how can we create learning opportunities for this?
What is the real purpose of this meeting? Is a leader or stakeholder seeking security or control? Is someone seeking approval or protection from criticism?
Notice that clarity about purpose is useful for both the meeting efficiency/hygiene approach and the bigger picture context-based review.
There is room for both approaches, but be sure to consider both so that you don’t just end up with twice as many, more efficient (yay!....) meetings.
Cheers,
Marijke Ocean
P.S. If meetings are a source of frustration for you, leave a message here and let me know what the challenge is. I'd love to help.
P.P.S Do you know anyone that would enjoy reading this blog? I'd be honored if you pass it along and invite them to subscribe at my mailing list.