September 24, 2015
Meetings: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article published with permission from Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
They interrupt flow. They tend to convey all of the information you already knew and none of the things you really wanted to know. Meetings have emerged as one of the most universally despised conventions of American work life, and they show no sign of letting up.
But if workers and managers alike feel put upon by meetings, experts say it’s not meetings per se that are the culprit. The problem is bad meetings.
"When people are attending bad meetings and that is the pattern, they either check out or they act out," organizational psychologist Roger Schwarz, president and CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates, says. "By checking out they may be physically there but not engaged and contributing."
Meetings remain critical because business has become more complex and employees work more interdependently. Says Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard, "There are so many demands on us that leaders are scheduling meetings to get people engaged in the problem at hand."
Yet what might be adding to greater meeting misery today are the dual — and perhaps interrelated — factors of time and technology. There is a general perception of a speed-up in the workplace; that workers are just busier, and that tools like e-mail, Google Docs and instant messaging can get the job done more quickly and efficiently than meetings
"People are generally working longer hours and they’ve got more demands on them, and they are being expected to multitask," says Mr. Schwarz. "And so people look at meetings with an eye toward, ‘Is this is a good use of my time?’"
Recommendations for improving meetings include defining the purpose of each meeting, having everyone attending prepare in advance, and sending out an agenda in advance. Another suggestion was having different types of meetings with different objectives, such as the once-a-day, short meeting to catch up on any pending matters, longer staff meetings exploring key objectives and recent progress, and much longer meetings around strategy.
Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell says that meetings can feel burdensome, "because they don’t feel like proper work," but in fact, they are. "The rationale is coordination, which is a function of organization, to bring together a lot of different people who do a lot of different things. Rules are one way of achieving coordination, but the more complex the issue, the more you have to sit down and work through things. Face-to-face you get the richest communication — you read body language, you learn much more and faster."
Discussion Questions
Is your company guilty of having too many “bad meetings”? What suggestions would you have to improve engagement and the overall productivity of meetings?
Poll
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Dave Wendland
Vice President, Strategic RelationsHamacher Resource Group
Warren Thayer
Editor Emeritus & Co-Founder, Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer
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Here’s some advice on “bad meetings” versus “good meetings” I recently offered in a column appearing in Healthcare Distributor magazine. I think it answers the question rather succinctly.
Wish I had time to write more … have to run to a meeting now.
The good meetings accomplish what they set out to do. Simply stated, the bad ones do not. The ugly ones not only don’t accomplish what they were intended to do but cause harm in some form or another.
The basics of better meetings are known to all. A few of them are as follows: They should only be held when necessary. An agenda should be sent out in advance so attendees know what the meeting is about. The only people in attendance are those that have to be there. They should be to the point and brief. I am sure that others will add more tenets to holding a productive meeting.
I’m the “town meeting” moderator of my little town in Vermont. Once a year we meet to discuss “articles” to be voted upon, like a raise for the school committee, or the paving of a new road. At the start of each meeting, I call for a voice vote on how long people will be allowed to speak before being gaveled down. Over the years, the trend has moved down from three minutes to two minutes. My rules are that nobody gets to speak a second time on a subject until everyone else has had the opportunity to speak about it.
I’m strict with the gavel (or my head is handed to me) and on rare occasions I’ll put it to a vote on whether someone can go beyond two or three minutes. When things get gnarly, I trot out a simplified version of Robert’s Rules of Order. That keeps people on point. I think the Wharton article is spot-on. But a couple of these ideas might also help with the business meetings we all must endure.
There are no “bad” meetings, just “bad” meeting leadership. There are so many ways to have energizing meetings but we have to get out and learn them, try different processes until you find one that fits your circumstances and the culture of your organization.
I slightly disagree with Professor Bidwell that “rules” achieve coordination. Rules breed compliance and compliance tends to exhaust energy and spirit. Just knowing that you are going to use “Roberts Rules of Order” makes you wish you had a root canal appointment. That was an idea from 1876! Attempts to control rarely produce results.
Over the years I’ve taught several thousand managers and executives how to facilitate energizing and productive meetings. Here are some of the basic principles:
A good facilitator manages the balance between maintenance and task while trying to minimize “SOB” behavior or turn them into something productive.
When a meeting leaves you spiritually exhausted, something has gone wrong. When you wouldn’t miss a meeting for anything you’ll know you have something very valuable — treasure it.
PS: It’s extremely rare to have a great idea in the middle of a meeting and never during a board meeting. Most great ideas come to people AFTER the meeting!
Nah, we have good meetings. Things do get done and we actually stay on topic. Some of our meetings could be shorter and I wish others were longer. The key to productivity with meetings is having an agenda that you stick to and recording larger meetings and making it easy to access and reference the meeting.
We recently made it OK to decline a meeting and started reducing the number of folks invited. Not getting invited lead to some pouty faces and hurt feelings at first. As folks got more done and were able to leave a little earlier or didn’t feel so time pressured the hurt feelings have abated almost entirely. There are always a few who want to know everything and not going to a meeting is being out of the loop.
The problems are as stated in this discussion. Purpose, relevance and participation are forsaken and replaced with a collection of data and announcements that are delivered with little or no enthusiasm. Weekly or monthly agendas and topics with the random one day prior release of membership contributions may be the road to more success here. Keeping this at a limit of fifteen to twenty minutes will only be a challenge for those totally new to public speaking and the process. Time and practice will make for a better experience for all.
Limit meetings. Period. Can the topic be covered via email? Most of the time, yes. Really gut-check the purpose of the meeting before you schedule it. You may be surprised at how many can be covered via email.
There are two types of meetings I’m thinking about since reading this. The first is the office meeting. The key to success is to make them short, with no wasted time. Consider a standing meeting.
The second meeting is a conference. The key to a successful meeting is to have three areas covered: Education/content, community/networking and free time/entertainment.