Running Effective Meetings

Recently, someone told me, "I want to be productive, but I can't because I have so many meetings." The irony here is that meetings should be productive, but organizations don’t seem to be able to master them. Despite extensive research to write this post, my conclusion is that there is no silver bullet solution. It's about continuous iteration, best suiting your team and goals. I summarize my findings below, proposing some actionable recommendations to get you going.

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Running Effective Meetings

Ineffective meetings cost the US up to $283 billion, with workers spending up to 45% of their workweek (18 hours) on meetings. Only 31% of meetings are deemed necessary, but employees are hesitant to decline meetings, as less than half of those wanting to decline actually do so (source: Otter.ai's survey). Microsoft Teams data also reveals that the most popular meeting times conflict with peak productivity hours (9-11 am and 2-3 pm).

Data shows the best companies have more meetings. The misuse of collaboration tools such as Slack or email harms productivity, causing an average of 13.9 daily interruptions. BCG's study of 1,000 global companies reveals the best companies spend 7% more time in direct interactions (vs. asynchronous communication such as email), highlighting the impact of having effective meetings.

Predictable meetings contribute significantly to the chaos. Doodle's report states 22% of US (and 46% of Europe!) meetings are scheduled a month in advance. This immediately makes me think about how teams of any size can adopt EOS's (Entrepreneurial Operating System) “Level 10 Meetings” where there is a structured agenda with discussions on crucial metrics, issue resolution, a review of past commitments, and an openness to receive feedback on how to make the meeting a 10 out of 10.

Shopify's bold move - deleting 322,000 hours of meetings. They became the envy of the tech world when they used a custom-coded bot to eliminate recurring meetings, and highlighted the costs of new meetings based on attendees' salaries. This radical productivity-boosting purge earned widespread praise, empowering their employees to decline even senior managers' meetings that weren’t aligned to their guidelines. While meetings persist, Shopify's approach sparks a trend that other companies have followed, some even allocating specific meeting minutes per employee.

Tips for more productive meetings:

1. Cover the basics:

   • Structure meetings with a clear agenda: Begin with the meeting's purpose, and then work backwards from that purpose with proposed discussion topics.

   • Limit invitees: Share the agenda beforehand and invite only one person per team. Allow forwarding based on the agenda, but start with a smaller group.

   • Ensure continuity in recurring meetings: Start recurrent meeting (e.g. weekly business review, monthly sync with your mentor) with the previous meeting's next steps and current status, for a seamless flow and sense to be building on top of something.

   • Recap and distribute notes: Conclude meetings five minutes early, summarizing agreements, next steps, owners, and due dates. Then distribute the meeting notes.

   • Manage meeting time effectively: Be ruthless about redirecting discussions back to the planned agenda when they go off track.

2. Establish clear communication norms: Define guidelines and SLAs for each communication method. For instance, use Slack for requests that take less than 2 minutes (popular GTD principle) and set expectations to reply by EOD, or encourage declining meetings without a clear agenda or with multiple people from your same team.

3. Consider changing your meetings’ default structure (e.g. Office Hour-type meetings): If overwhelmed with meetings, consider setting designated Office Hours for discussions instead of having them scattered throughout the day. *This is actually Cal Newport’s proposal during his latest Tim Ferriss episode.

Nice to meet ya,

Jorge Luis Pando

"You should never go to a meeting or make a telephone call without a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve" - Steve Jobs