Should we have a meeting?

I'm lost in a meeting culture. Many of you face this issue, too... from the corporate world to the student affairs world, we just meet too damn much. In any given week, 80% or more of my schedule is taken up by meetings, with most of the other 20% spent emailing ABOUT meetings. Maybe this doesn't bother you, but it's been frustrating me as I think more about how I spend my time and why we do the things we do.

Three common problems with meetings at my institution (and I'm sure you have experienced)...

1. We start each meeting with more than 5 minutes of small talk. I know we like each other, but the reason for the meeting should be at the front of our minds, not spending time talking about the weekend or pop culture stuff. (Note: This is where the introversion kicks in and I'm considered a jerk. I just like to think I'm trying to be efficient!). Is a scheduled business meeting the place for social time? Perhaps for some organizations, but I wonder if it's the best use of meeting time.

2. A member of the group almost always walks in late. Instead of being able to quietly grab a chair and listen, the group usually decides to walk through everything that had been discussed up to that point. So nearly 5-10 minutes are spent rehashing the first 20 minutes.

3. Near the end of a scheduled 60-minute meeting, the meeting is starting to wrap. The leader of said meeting will say "Any other items or thoughts?" Half of the group stays quiet and about half mutter "Nope..." so the leader says "Have a great day, everyone!" Which is the exact moment someone says "Well, I do have a question..." and a nearly perfectly timed hour-long meeting suddenly lasts 70 minutes and makes us 10 minutes late for our next meeting.

These incidents happen in a surprisingly high number of meetings I attend. Do they happen to you? How does it affect your engagement? Your interest?

A great piece by Carson Tate in the New York Times discusses the idea that time spent in a meeting "should generate a return on investment" and that meetings should have agendas and those agendas should align with organizational strategic priorities. He suggests using alternative methods like email or shared documents (e.g. Google docs). He also suggests having participants stand during in-person meetings to insure more efficient use of time.

Robert Pozen writes in The Wall Street Journal that if a meeting is absolutely necessary, it should never last longer than 60 minutes. Anything more than that and we lose focus. He also points to a clear lack of preparation in meetings that are ineffective. How many meetings have you attended that didn't have an agenda? How often do you lead meetings without an agenda (other than the one in your head)?

Meetings are a vital way to allow voices to be heard, but there are ways to improve the way we meet and the reasons we meet to still allow voices of colleagues/employees to be heard as well and increase our productivity and efficiency.

So what can we do?

1. Learn to say "no." Clearly there are meetings to which we cannot say no, but often our willingness to say no can help us moderate our use of meetings and keep us focused on our work.

2. Be serious about holding work time on your calendar and encourage your colleagues or employees to do the same. This allows us to challenge the need to set meetings and gives us a reason to say "no" more often. I have done this when the opportunity allows, but I quickly found that colleagues mocked it. I'd get a call to schedule a meeting and colleagues would say "I know you have time - your schedule is full but it's your 'fake schedule.'" No. That is my schedule. Work time - even a short amount of time to respond to emails, voicemails or - better yet - just to THINK for a few minutes, can be incredibly rejuvenating.

3. Have a purpose for meetings. Is the topic ready for discussion? Is there a clear agenda? Would another day (or week) of prep time allow for a better discussion? And if it has purpose, you'll keep it short. Limiting an agenda will narrow the focus of the meeting and will enable more effective use of in-person gatherings.

4. Respect other peoples' time. Schedule 45 or 50 minute meetings to allow your group to leave and get to their next meetings on time. Is social time at the beginning or end of a meeting part of your organization's culture? Does it need to be?

5. Never meet just to meet. If a topic does not need to be discussed or there are no topics that need immediate attention, DON'T MEET! Cancel or postpone a meeting - it frees up time in your schedule and you reward your colleagues/employees with additional work time in their day.

Ironically, the poem of the day in the Writer's Almanac on the day I started this post was...

At the Very Lengthy Meeting

by Kevin McCaffrey

At the very lengthy meeting
I actually felt my soul leave my body
and rush toward the ceiling—
and fly around the walls and flare
toward daylight, toward the windows—
to throw silently its impetuous emptiness
against the glass in vain.
It could not go anywhere, the clear moth.

Then it lay on the rug, not exhausted
but bored and so inert that it almost—
though nothing—
took on a hue, stained with all the breaths
and words and thoughts that filled the room:
the yellow-green color of old teeth.