If the last meeting you went to sucked badly, you are in good company. A survey of over 1000 North American managers indicated that on average they spend about 17 hours per week in meetings. Of that considerable portion of their work-week, they deemed that one-third of that time was wasted.
The economic implications of this are staggering. If you multiply 6 hours times the hourly rate of those managers times the number of managers in the economy, you begin to see a number with a whole bunch of zeros behind it. Even in your own organization this calculation could easily total in the millions of dollars every year.
More selfishly, ask yourself what you would do if you had an extra six hours every week. Could you work more reasonable hours? Perhaps you could get to those things you know are important but are constantly displaced by the urgent.
This got us to ask the question, “if meetings are systemically bad, and they cost that much what can be done?”
First of all, do not accept that meetings have to be bad. We all seem resigned that we have to write-off a significant portion of our week to something we know is useless. Demand more of yourself, and of your organization.
Second – be part of the solution. This is your problem to solve. Even if you do not chair the meeting, you can raise questions as to how effective they are. Your complacency will get you into more pointless meetings.
Third – insist on a structure. The engineers and accountants always get a bad rap for being anal retentive. While you may want to avoid such people at cocktail parties, invite them to help fix your meetings. A bit of discipline will exponentially improve the value of your meetings.
Finally – figure out what meetings are costing you. What is the cost to the organization by the time they pay a fully burdened labour cost. What is the cost to you if meetings are causing you to work longer hours and give up your leisure time. Profit-driven organizations are usually good a containing costs when they have to. Get them to contain the cost of their meetings.
Then you’ll have more time to read our blog, and download YouTube clips. Here’s one from John Cleese – for those who love British humour.