How do I reduce time in meetings?

Another meeting request?  How am I ever going to get any work done?

 

We did the figures

I remember my first job - working in a K-Mart in Cairns, Australia.  I loved it.  We had one meeting a week that lasted for about 10 minutes.  Now my diary seems to explode with meeting requests, so many sometimes that I go from meeting, to meeting, to, well, you guessed it, meeting.  Some days I barely get time to stand up from my desk because I have so many meetings!  At a conservative estimate, in a week, I might have four 30-minute meetings a day, five days a week.  52 weeks a year.  That’s 520 hours of meetings.  Let’s assume that I work a 40-hour week, then that works out to 13 weeks a year spent in meetings - and remember, that estimate is a conservative one!

 

Could this have been an email?

Some of these meetings are highly useful, others, I find myself wondering why the content couldn’t be put in an email - and a short email at that (look out for another blog on concise emails).  I meet with one of my most successful entrepreneurial clients once every three weeks or so.  He is so skilled at meetings (and every minute of his time is worth A LOT!) that within 7-10 minutes we can cover all of the tasks that he needs us to manage for him, we can bring him up to speed on pending items, ask any necessary questions, hear about his holiday plans, and have a bit of a chat.  That’s what I call an efficient meeting, and an efficient use of everyone’s time!

 

What are we actually doing?

Meetings can be great, and you can learn a lot, as long as they are conducted properly.  They can also be great for people’s mental health - especially in these times of remote working, but they can be equally damaging to mental health, especially when stress levels are rising as people are expected to get more and more done in increasingly shorter amounts of time.

One of the things that you need to ask yourself before calling (or attending) a meeting, is WHAT IS THIS MEETING FOR?  A useful meeting is used to gather or disseminate information.  Perhaps it’s for brainstorming.  Or coming up with an idea for a new product or service.  When I have updates for or from my clients, or progress on a project, we don’t share it immediately, we tend to hold off until a meeting.  But is this the best way?  There are some great tools that you can use that we have implemented in our business to communicate updates effectively and to the right people, quickly, efficiently, and without the need to block off massive chunks of time in their diaries.

Using the right tools

Meetings will always have their place in any situation, business, or organisation.  Sometimes though, they just aren’t the right tool for the job.  We have so much technology at our fingertips: why not use some of it

- If someone has a question about how to do something, why not record a quick video where you can share your screen? We use https://www.loom.com - it has saved us countless hours!

- What about instant messaging with your staff?  We use a range of tools internally and with our clients, all of them have the ability to have individual or group chats.  Some that we use are https://slack.com, https://www.whatsapp.com, and https://signal.org.

- Something else that we use, wait for this one - is the phone!  We pick up the phone and make a quick telephone call/

- We also send out an internal newsletter with key updates that people need to know about, which our team can read at a time that aligns with their schedule.  We use https://mailchimp.com 

All of these tools that I’ve mentioned are free, or have free plans in their packages.  So, as well as saving your business money by keeping your outgoings low, they will save you money by keeping your team focused on income-generating activities rather than twiddling their thumbs in a meeting that they really don’t need to be involved in.

 

What else can you do to reduce meeting times?

• Set an agenda, send it out to all attendees, and stick to it!
• Take action points throughout the meeting so you walk away with a clear outline of what needs to be achieved.
• Set a time limit – you’d be surprised at how much can be achieved in 15 minutes.
• Always ask yourself ‘is this relevant to the purpose of the meeting’.
• Don’t be afraid to call out people if they get off topic – don’t worry, everyone is thinking it!
• Ask yourself if you really need to be involved, or is your input actually necessary?

 

Time for change

Every job I have been in (and that involves military, government, private sector, and even my own business as we were growing and learning and didn’t know any better) have had the same drain on time - meetings.  Meetings that felt like they went on for weeks.  While ruling out meetings all together is impractical, let’s make a stand and claim back some of those 13 weeks a year by implementing some new systems in your business.  I’ll set the challenge now, how many hours can you claim back in your week to take back control of your diary, one meeting at a time?

 

 

Blog by Background Support

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