Gourmet Meetings on a Microwave Schedule - Part I

If you dislike attending meetings, you’ve got a lot of company. More than 25 million meetings are held daily in the United States according to the Wharton Center for Applied Research. Participants consider 42% of their meetings (more than 10.5 million each day!) to be a waste of time.

Just a waste of time? What about the additional drain on energy, dollars, productivity, and morale?

Consider this. If you are in a meeting of ten people whose salaries range between $50,000 and $150,000, the average expense of a one hour and eighteen minute meeting (after all, how many meetings actually stay within their one hour scheduled time frame?) is about $691.00. A little quick math tells you that $691.00, times the more than 10 million “waste-of-time” meetings held in the US each day, adds up to employers paying more than $7 billion dollars daily in salaries alone for their employees to waste time! However, if these employees were to spend that same time performing value-added activities, companies would realize far greater returns.

For the next few weeks, articles will focus on solutions to these high-cost concerns, solutions that lead to sharp increases in productivity and value.

We’ve recently talked with organizations about their primary meeting frustrations. Five of them include: one or two participants who monopolize the meeting; meetings are boring; agendas are missing or late; participants are unprepared; and there are too many meetings on the same topic.

This month, we’ll focus on the problem of too many meetings on the same topic. We invite you to consider which potential solutions are most relevant to the conditions and culture of your company or volunteer organization and apply them in your next meeting.

Here are three (of 15 we’ve identified) solutions with real examples drawn from our facilitation work for fewer meetings that yield more excellent results.

1. Assure that the objective of the meeting is as focused and as specific as possible. Often meeting objectives are broad, leaving too much room for debate, interpretation, and endless discussion. To the best of your ability, zero in on a focused, measurable statement. A great question to ask when you hear an objective stated is, “what exactly do you mean by that?” Ask it until you have maximum clarity.

Example of an objective that is too broad: To improve safety in the smelter.

Question asked for greater clarity: What exactly do you mean by that?

Final objective: Reduce lost work time due to serious injury by 50% for every 200,000 man-hours worked.

2. Consider (and reconsider!) the participants invited to your meeting. Too often, we get into a rut of assuming that the same people that attend a given meeting are the ones that need to be there. That assumption may or may not be true. There are a number of questions that you can ask to raise the contribution of those that attend. Here are five of those valuable questions:

Who has important/essential information to share?
Whom are you obligated to invite?
Who is in a position to provide what you need to achieve your objectives?
Who could create a problem if not invited?
How will you handle participants that do not add value?

Example of question #5 at work: At a meeting of salespeople from around the country, five were antagonistic to the objective of the meeting, which was to identify specific strategies to raise sales for the coming year.

Question asked of the five to identify the value of their contribution: Can you make your greatest contribution to this meeting by staying with us or would your contribution be greater if you leave the room?

Final decision: Two of the five felt their best contribution was to leave the room.

3. Strive for consensus more often. Meeting leaders often want to seek full agreement to decisions. Often, full agreement requires excessive time and energy. Choose, instead, to understand and pursue consensus. The test of consensus is when meeting participants can say, “I can live with that.” To achieve consensus, invite the sharing of viewpoints that include feelings as well as facts. Also ensure active participation by everyone in the meeting. Recognize that consensus is not a vote or complete satisfaction with the outcome. Consensus focuses on, “I have been heard and I can support the resulting decision.”

Example of a need for consensus: Doctoral level pharmacy students from two schools were making a decision about an innovative service for community pharmacies. Within one group, there were two factions deadlocked on the direction to take. In large part, the deadlock was a function of an emotional stance from one student whose viewpoint was heavily influenced by the situation of her grandfather.

Action taken to resolve the deadlock: Two executives from Rite-Aid and Pfizer provided information and counsel to enrich the objective viewpoints of the meeting participants.

Final result: Conversation following the consult with business executives focused on the pros/cons of the two services being considered. The end result was that the student whose grandfather was on her mind was able to say, “Thanks for listening to me. I will support the direction that this group wants to take.”

Does your organization find itself recycling problems and issues time and time again? Do you despair of ever seeing real results in meetings that you attend? Do you wonder what action to take? Consider the words of famous folksinger Joan Baez, “action is the antidote to despair.” Take action now. Make yourself memorable by putting these solutions into practice.

For more ideas about running great meetings check out Gourmet Meetings on a Microwave Schedule by Deanne Herr and Susan Wilson.