"Attending Meetings" is Not A Job

One day when I was working from home for IBM in a highly distributed product team, my then 6 year old daughter said to me… “Daddy, I though your job was with computers?  It seems your job is more about attending conference calls.”  As I glanced at my week’s calendar, she surely was correct.  How many of these meetings are really necessary?  How many do I really need to be in?  And what about my team, were they in meeting hell as well?
In almost every high tech company I’ve worked in, inevitably someone will complain that there are too many meetings.  It doesn’t take a 6 year old to recognize that there is likely a lot of time wasted discussing and reporting, when we could be creating and delivering.  This led me to write down my top tips for ensuring time spent in meetings is worth the expense.

Know the Cost:  Have you ever quickly calculated how much money your meetings cost?  You will be sick when you do.  Cost overruns happen a minute at a time.  Making meetings efficient will ultimately improve your bottom line.  Try running the meeting with one of the various free cost tickers on your screen or phone to help your team be conscious of cost. 

ACTION:  Search for Meeting Calculator apps.

Agenda:  Of course this list would be remiss if it didn’t demand meetings to have an agenda - or at least an objective.  So mark this one off the list.  We all know this, but yet we continue to plop meetings on calendars without agendas.  And how many of your meetings end with someone stating “Let’s schedule a follow-up meeting on this topic”.  Why, was it so much fun the first time?

Forget agendas, many meetings do not even sport an adequate description line. Here are some actual meeting requests I’ve received:  “Discussion with Bruce” - I know that probably means something to the person that sent it, and it looks correct on their calendar, but when I look at my calendar I don’t even know who I’m having the discussion with (other than myself).   “Meeting with Sally & Mike” - cool, on what?  And I’m glad it was identified as a meeting in the description - I thought maybe we were going to take a jog.    

ACTION:  Demand an Agenda and/or clear description of the meeting.  Consider not accepting meetings that are not well defined.

Meeting length.  What’s wrong with a 15 or 20 minute meeting?  Does every decision take 60 minutes to decide?   It seems that when someone feels they need to call a meeting, in most cases the default timeframe is one hour.  Encourage your team to estimate how long the meeting should be based on the Agenda.  You wouldn’t tolerate your developers to default every coding task to a full week - so why assume every meeting requires 60 minutes.  It is OK to set a meeting for 12 minutes if that is all the time you need to accomplish the meeting objective.  Trust me, Outlook knows how to handle it.

ACTION:  Configure Outlook to default to 15 minute meeting length.  Right click on timescale in calendar to set scale and default will follow scale.  (Sorry Outlook for Mac users, this is only available in Windows).

The Entire Company is Not Required:  The ever abused CC line, application of the RACI model, or aka our need to ensure all stakeholders are at meetings so that everyone has a say and a decision is not later overturned.  If you are planning a blowout party with your friends, for sure, invite them all!  But the goal for meeting invites should be to invite only who you need to accomplish the meeting objective.  This seems easy but it is not because most organizations lack one critical ingredient required to escape the the urge of over-inviting.  That ingredient is Trust.  Once an organization trusts each other to allow their colleagues to make decisions for the good of the company, you can ramp up your decision making process with a ton less people.

Meetings are for making Decisions:   I once had the privilege to have breakfast with Lou Gerstner, former turnaround CEO of IBM.  We were in a group of other executives and the topic of meeting bound days came up.  He said “Meetings should be about making decisions, everything else is a waste of time”.  I liked the quote so much I wrote it down.

Beware of the recurring meeting:  Regularly scheduled meetings are not bad, as long as they meet the other criteria such as having a  clear objective.  The problem is that too many times I arrive at a recurruing meeting just because it happens to be Tuesday at 10am, and the organizer is trying to figure out what to talk about.    I know that with everyone so busy, the organizer may have set this meeting up just  to keep focus on that particular project.  How about putting a 5 minute reminder on people’s calendars for them to read the latest status report and record updates to action items?  Save the meeting for when something is wrong or needs a focused discussion.  This may accomplish the same objective without the 60 minutes of unorganized chatter.  

ACTION:  Apply the agenda rule:  No agenda, respectfully decline.

Consider a Meeting Free Day:  I have instituted meeting free time periods in the past with some success.  Pick a few hours or if you can an entire day and block the team’s calendar.  Do not allow any meetings to be called during that time period.  You will find it to be the most productive time of the week for you and your staff!

Start Meetings on Time:  This is another point that if it were not to be included, this entire blog entry would be null and void.  I applaud those who are always on time for meetings, and even more those that consistently start meetings on time.  I admit I am often late to meetings due to the high load of back to back commitments of a manager.  But when I walk into a meeting late and someone does the courtesy of starting a recap for my benefit, I stop them in their tracks.  If someone is late, no matter the position, they should catch up on their own or offline.  If your company starts to build Trust as indicated above, they should be able to carry the meeting without you anyway.

I hope this helps you and your team on the road to productivity and your children will once again marvel at your career as a software professional and not a professional meeting attendee.