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Time wasting at meetings.

By Ed Bones

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 09Jun2009 Word count: 550 Viewed: 108 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

I recently attended a series of meetings during an introduction to a new client's business. Without exception these meetings were a total waste of time, in that nothing was achieved. Individuals on the 'calling list' were absent, while others came late or left early. It was common for actions outstanding from the previous meeting to remain unaddressed, and nobody seemed particularly concerned over this. Generalising slightly, it appeared that these meetings were called and attended as a formality to demonstrate some requirement to have a meeting, why? I never discovered.

This experience can be repeated daily in every area of business, and because it is so much the norm there is no serious attempt to change, to effect an improvement. In this we find the cause of this time wasting activity engaged in daily by millions of workers, managers and executives, these meetings had no purpose other than to work through an agenda.

I have experienced meetings where the supplied agenda and supporting material would have looked well for a royal visit. Where the agenda was well supplied with references and the participant list should have been a guarantee of a fast moving decision making and effective gathering, but still they failed to have any serious impact on the participants or the organisation they were part of.

Perhaps the worst of all meetings are those where a series of presentations have been planned. Individuals - or sometimes their teams - arrive to deliver what can only be called 'Death by PowerPoint', where the sub-agenda appears to be focussed on the best presentation slides regardless of content. The consequence of this battle for supremacy is a meeting that either exceeds its time allocation - where one was actually in place, or is rearranged as it proceeds to remove 'less significant' items from the agenda.

And then I recall a different scenario. Working at a senior level in a large organisation I had a department head whose meetings were different. People invited to his meetings were given a clear statement of purpose and timing. Meetings started on-time, and finished on-time, and were brief. Nobody arrived unprepared - at least not more than once - and contributions were brief and focussed on the meeting objectives. That was and is the difference between normal meetings and successful meetings.

When meetings have a clear purpose and are managed by leaders who understand that purpose, digression is avoided and gatherings have value to the individual and the organisation.

Quality management processes are intended to support process improvement through the efforts of employee groups. Inevitably the activity of these working groups will involve participation in meetings where decisions are to be the outcome. It is an unfortunate fact that the meeting ethos will be set by what they see around them, by their experience of how it is done by their leaders and others, so the outlook is not good.

Managers and all who might be involved in the management of meetings of any sort must learn that while an agenda is a good idea the meeting should be driven by an Objective. Why are we here, what are we attempting to do? Any participant diverging from that line must be redirected to this objective - and that includes the meeting leader!

Agendas don't work, Objectives do.

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