Too Many Meetings? Let’s Fix That!
Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.
~Jason Fried
It sucks to consistently have critical job duties get pushed into the evenings and weekends because you’re spending a lot of the regular work hours in meetings. Constantly talking about the work without the time to actually do the necessary independent work demolishes morale and induces burnout. If this is the case for you or your employees, we have a few pieces of advice:
Good luck with that! (Just kidding…mostly.)
Do an audit of your meetings over the last quarter or so. Which ones were essential and which ones seemed like you didn’t need to be there? Which ones would have been better handled asynchronously, or where just receiving the meeting notes would have sufficed? Bring this audit to your manager (or ask your employees to bring their audit to you if you are the manager) and ask for permission to remove yourself from non-essential meetings. If only small parts of a meeting are relevant to you, work out a plan to get or give the information in a more efficient manner or see if you can show up for only the time you’re needed (which would require that the meeting has an agenda). Ask for your manager’s sponsorship (or provide sponsorship to your employees) in communicating the change of plan to other team members so it doesn’t give others the perception that you’re independently choosing to slack off.
Create a “meeting map.” In its simplest terms, this is where a leaders look at all the meetings happening in the department or team and determines which ones can be deleted, combined, and shortened (or lengthened). Basically, it’s looking for inefficiencies and duplications. Taking the big-picture view of the meetings in a group or organization can go a long way in terms of saving time.
Block out “independent work time” on your calendar. Encourage yourself or your employees to schedule time for the kind of independent concentration that is necessary for your job. Accounting for that type of work on your calendar (as opposed to leaving it blank) makes it less likely a colleague will schedule a meeting with you during that time.
Do the daily “stand up” meeting. By taking just 5 to 10 minutes each day to quickly report on updates, roadblocks, and focuses for the day, you may find that there is less need to schedule meetings. Often, just understanding what people are doing each day provides enough information to proceed with our work without having to schedule more meetings to get the needed updates. It allows people to better prioritize with whom they actually need to have a meeting with, and helps others understand and respect your availability for any given day. Give it a try and see if it works for you.