Follow Kirk on Twitter10 Steps to Make Your Meetings Suck Less
May 27th, 2010 by Kirk Dando
A couple of years ago I was talking to my friend John Day, who was complaining about how much time he was spending in meetings and how bad they sucked. He had to get to the office super early and stay super late just to get “real” work done.
I asked John why he and his company were having so many meetings. He said most of them were regularly scheduled meetings to share information and give and get updates. I asked him the obvious question: “John, if these meetings are not a good use of time or suck so bad, why do you and everyone else keep going to them?” He sheepishly said… “They were ‘mandatory’ and no one ever questions them?”
I told him not to worry about it; it is very normal for a successful, growth-hungry company to experience what I call “Fieldtrip Meetings,” where people show up to meetings and take “mental fieldtrips” until they’re over. Then when the “fieldtrip” meeting is over, the “real” meetings (sidebar meetings) begin in the hallways and offices of everyone who was supposed to be a productive part of the “fieldtrip” meeting. If I have to explain what happens in these sidebar meetings, then you probably do not need to keep reading.
The next question I asked John was: “If I give you an overly obvious and embarrassingly simple idea of how you can make your meetings suck less, where people actually want to show up and provide you and your company with a measurable MEETING ROI (Return on Investment)… would you have the guts to implement it?” John said he was willing try anything within reason.
Fast forward one year. John called me and said he “had just been promoted to VP of Operations and his company just had the most profitable year in its 35-year-history, despite the bad economy.” I congratulated him and asked what were one or two things he thought attributed to his promotion and the company’s financial success? I was surprised to hear him say that one of the biggest things everyone attributed his promotion and the company’s success to was the simple, but not easy, strategy I shared with him a year earlier of how to maximize their MEETING ROI.
John went onto to say that they were no longer having “fieldtrip meetings” or unproductive sidebar meetings. The communications, and thus the productivity, in the company had significantly improved. All of their meetings were scoring an 8.8 out of 10 or above and they were getting very positive response from their un-written “No Mental Fieldtrip” policy, which stated if someone feels a regularly scheduled meeting is not a good use of their time, they do not have to show up.” He said the “No Mental Fieldtrips policy was great and created instant word-of-mouth feedback highlighting unproductive meetings.”
Do you want to know the overly obvious and embarrassingly simple strategy I shared with John? If so, keep reading.
WARNING: I know it is highly unusual for a business strategy to come with a WARNING label but, once again experience has taught me that if I do not warn you about this business strategy you are likely to keep doing the same things the same way you did the day before, month after month, year after year until finally, although the business does not explode, the people do, often at each other.
So here is your WARNING… this strategy does not cost you any money, it is overly obvious and embarrassingly simple and will likely provide you and your company with one of the highest ROI’s of any investment you make this year. The temptation to ignore this strategy due to its simplicity and/or not keep up with it because it reeks of positive (versus punitive) accountability is significant.
I get that this will not work for every single meeting. Instead of thinking about the instances where this strategy will not work, think about the instances where it will work. Do not be a coward, be a leader and give this a try; it will be transformative!
Also, if you have created or are part of a culture where people are not allowed to tell the truth, be transparent and help in a shared journey to scale the business and avoid the train wrecks then this strategy will not work. You have bigger problems…
WHAT IS MEETING ROI?
Meeting ROI is an non-scientific way to measure the return on investment (ROI) you are getting from the time, money and talent you are investing each week, month or year on internal meetings.
Beyond the increased financial performance, productivity and improved company communications, when you grade your meetings based on a pertinent set of criteria (e.g. start on time, good use of time, end on time, agenda, the right people are in the meeting, action items are documented and followed up on, etc.) you cause real, authentic conversations to occur in your company.
This is something that is desperately missing in most corporate cultures. A couple of key things that happen when meetings are graded is:
- The meeting leader becomes highly sensitive to making sure the meeting is a good use of everyone’s time and the selected grading criteria are adhered to,
- The company leadership can get a report card for all internal meetings so they will know which meetings need their attention and which ones are running well.
The goal is betterment, not punitive harassment!
HERE IS HOW IT WORKS (the sequence of activities is important):
You need to figure out a) generally (do not try to make this harder than it needs to be) what hard costs you are investing as a company annually on internal meetings and b) the criteria you will use to grade your meetings.
1) Have your team figure out how much time they spend in internal meetings in a week, take that times (X) 52 weeks to get how much time is spent in internal meetings in a year,
2) Then have each of them figure out their hourly salary (if they are salaried, have them take their annual salary plus payroll taxes, etc. and divide by 2080 hours for a year) and take that times the total hours spent in meetings in a year,
3) Then add up everyone’s time and salary amount to come up with the $$ spent in internal meetings in a year (this does not take into account lost opportunity costs from sitting in a meeting versus being out selling, building customer relations, etc.)
4) Have your team come up with a list of what makes a meeting extremely successful, (e.g. agenda, people come prepared, starts and ends on time, is a good use of time, etc.)
5) Have them select what they think are the 2 or 3 most important items from the list in #4 that if done very well would make your meetings a great use of time and talent,
6) To create a baseline or starting point, have your team grade your meetings based on the 2 or 3 criteria selected in #5. Now take the average of everyone’s score and let that be your starting point. If you want, you can score different types of meetings, (e.g. staff meeting, strategic planning meetings, weekly marketing meeting, etc.)
7) Now look at your annual investment from time spent in meetings from #3 versus the average grade you just came up with in #6. Are you satisfied with this grade?
- John’s company originally had an average grade of 5.9 on a $1.3 million annual meeting investment. That is a failing grade and a very poor ROI in anyone’s grading book.
8) Now set your goals, prepare your culture to start grading meetings, set up the system to capture and track each meetings grade and watch your meetings and culture start sucking less.
- John’s company set a goal to have meetings that were 9′s (it seems hardly anyone ever gives a grade of 10)
9) Once you are achieving your goals, go back to the criteria you came up with in #4 and see if there are any other criteria you want to start using to grade your meetings to continue the improvement process.
10) MOST IMPORTANTLY. Do what works for you and your company. Remember the WARNING label…do not water this down so far that is just causes people to roll their eyes at the hypocrisy.
EXAMPLE OF HOW TO GRADE YOUR MEETINGS
1) At the end of each meeting QUICKLY (no more than 5 to 8 minutes) go around the table and get everyone’s grade, average the grade and keep it on a report card for that particular meeting. Post scores for all of your company’s different meetings as a fun way to create accountability and a healthy competition.
2) Once in a while, ask each person in the meeting what would have made the meeting a 10, assuming they did not grade the meeting a 10. This will give you specific feedback on what needs to be done to improve the meeting. BE AUTHENTIC AND ALLOW TRANSPARANECY. DO NOT BE DEFENSIVE!
If you are ready to have your meetings and communications significantly improve, then try this OVERLY OBVIOUS and EMABARRASSINGLY SIMPLE strategy!
I would like to thank Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, for the title idea of this blog/article. Brett is a great friend, client and an amazing leader! He is writing a book with a working title of How to Make Your Company Suck Less! He will be giving all the proceeds from the book to charity, which speaks volumes about Brett!
Key Questions: If your meetings were all 10s, what would be different in your company? What other strategies have you seen that make meetings a great use of time?
I think just about everyone can relate to this article. I think the steps I like the most are #4 and #5. If you have the right people in place they will tell you what is important to include in a meeting and the decision-makers should trust that. I think, in most cases but not all, it is important to let employees know what is being discussed at a meeting. That way they know what is expected of them beforehand and can plan accordingly. This will lead to more productive and efficient (quicker) meetings. Additionally, this will also minimize the negative “water cooler” talk that develops within certain cliques in the office. Ultimately, this will lead to a more cohesive unit as everyone has input into meetings that they used to dread.
Lastly, the “mental fieldtrips” and “real” meetings (sidebar) analogy made me laugh. I have worked for an employer where this was a spot-on description.
Another great article, Kirk! Thanks for your wisdom and giving me a nice read to break up the monotony of my day.