Meetings consume vast amounts of time and resources. The people who participate deserve that managers not just ensure that this key area is well structured and thought through but that it’s measured, managed and upgraded on an ongoing basis, says Alph Keogh
Communication by its very nature should flow. That means in an organisation communication should have clear channels through which it circulates.
If the channels are not defined it will, like water, find its own to path in the form of wishful thinking, misrepresentations, rumours and so on. A systemic approach to meetings is key to making this a reality. Meetings should permit an organisation to breathe, inhaling the new and exhaling the old thus giving life to the culture as surely as oxygen gives life to the body.
Their function is not just to inform but to stimulate discussion and create a sense of forward movement. They are also opportunities to express emotion through the celebration of success and should ideally provide space for facing up to that which did not work so well. This cathartic function is vital not just to the overall economic health of the organisation but to the individual wellbeing of the people who work there.
Meetings are the nodes in the communications network that should help create as well as facilitate change and renewal. In many organisations this appears not to be the case. For many managers they are a source of frustration and conflict and often resemble more of a dam in the communications channel than a chance for participants to synthesise key messages and learnings to bring them back to their teams throughout the company.
Meetings in companies have had bad press forever. ‘There are too many’, (I recently spoke to an new manager who told me he had sixty-five meeting invites during his first three days) , ‘They have unclear goals, ‘They kill my productivity’, is some of the feedback that we hear.
Why is this type of feedback so persistent? The number one reason is that CEOs would rather have root canal treatment than stand up and say:‘I will make how we run our meetings my priority for the next three months’.
That same CEO may well be chauffer driven to the office so he can work and not ‘waste time’ driving, while permitting out of control meeting structures to consume massive amounts of time and resources in the organisation. Given that, no newly hired manager with an MBA will volunteer for that job as their first project. It`s not just ignorance that`s holding back change in this area, it`s embarrassment.
Finally, few managers are educated in the role of communications and very often it’s a task that carries a low priority. Well-organised companies who understand the value of their employees time and energy take great pains to get this right and as the speed of change and the volume of work increases these companies will have a great advantage over their rivals.
Meetings need first names
Imagine if your organisation had had a well thought out template and action-based agenda for crisis meetings at every level as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold and that this template was part of a structured suite of meetings shared across the organisation.
Think of the ease and speed of getting the company into crisis mode if a specific methodology already existed for doing so. Extend this thinking to cover the everyday meetings that companies engage in where tried and tested approaches are the norm instead of the exception. An established high-level common framework that clarifies the overall meeting strategy can then be complemented by low-level differentiation of objectives, content and agendas according to the various types of meetings required.
For example, a stand-up morning operational meeting will have a pace, duration and agenda vastly different to that of a strategy meeting. These meetings will not only have different approaches and tailored agendas but their own specific atmosphere and cadence.
If this type of approach to meetings is implemented in practice it can bring great benefits. For example, I once knew a company who inserted all key meetings in their yearly calendar in January and published their plan inside the company. They captured the objective of each meeting by assigning a name to it thus reflecting its meaning, methodology and focus.
Strategy (STR) and operational (OPS) meetings, for example, along with several others with specified names, all had their own place with varying frequency on the calendars with downloadable agendas and clear objectives. Taking the time to develop this structure reduced the overall number of meetings, as well as the time spent in them. The CEO saw it as an enormous enabler of strategy implementation, productivity and engagement.
Online meetings
Access to online communications during the Covid-19 lockdown has been a lifesaver for many. But I`m sure grandparents would much prefer to hold their grandchildren than try and interact with them over a remote connection.
No one, grandparent, manager or project team member would choose to pursue a relationship that runs purely on seeing someone on a screen and hearing their voice through a headset. Electronic communication is a wonderful fall-back position when face-to-face meetings are not possible but it`s a poor substitute for the real thing. It’s brilliant for extending business meetings but only as part of an overall solution based primarily of face-to-face meetings.
There are three aspects to keep in mind when blending online meetings into your structure:
1Include. People working in locations remote from where the centre of their company often feel less included in a team or group. The planned and regular use of technology can help bridge that gap and particularly when they already know the people they are interacting with.
2Integrate. Online meetings should be heavily integrated into the overall meetings structure. That means meeting content should flow naturally between these mediums. Online meeting should not mean just a superficial check-in but should be treated with the same level of importance as the face- to- face ones.
3Interact. They should be interactive and fast moving as well as being brief. The feedback I get is that about 45 minutes is the limit for most people in online settings. Let participants read all relevant information beforehand instead of making them concentrate on a whole deck of slides.
Another important consideration is where participants are tuning in from. Are they at home or are they in the office? Be sensitive to this. The rituals and cadence of home life is vastly different to what happens in the office and the intrusion of work into, in some cases, late evening family life needs to be discussed and agreed in advance. So be sure to be aware of and respect time zone differences.
Managers need to make meetings a strategic imperative
George Bernard Shaw once remarked: ‘The biggest single problem with communication is the illusion that it has happened’.
Randomness and a lack of coordination in meeting planning in organisations results in perpetuating the illusion he described. Meetings consume vast amounts of time and resources. The people who participate deserve that managers not just ensure that this key area is well structured and thought through but that it’s measured, managed and upgraded on an ongoing basis. The ‘solution’ in many companies I often observe is to invite in a speaker to the annual conference to talk about improving meetings.
While the input is often excellent it will at best bring a short-term benefit. Sorting out the meeting structure of your organisation may be the biggest source of value creation you can engage in this year.
Alph Keogh is a learning and change consultant, the managing director of YourOnBoard.com and the author of OnBoard – Everything you need to know about starting out in work today. (Panoma press, April 2020). With offices in Munich and Dublin he delivers Purpose driven Leadership, Team and Coaching, Change and Onboarding solutions for clients worldwide.
