How many times have you picked up your notebook, stood up to leave a meeting, and sighed deeply, muttering, “This could have been an email.” Probably at least a few times, right? Yet, with more people working remote or hybrid schedules, the volume of meetings on our calendar has increased. According to market research conducted by Archie, the number of meetings we attend has nearly tripled since 2020. We attend three or more meetings a day, which accounts for almost 1/3 of our work week.
Sure, the muttering isn’t wrong all the time. A lot of those meetings could have been an email, or at least a quick exchange on Teams or Slack. That doesn’t mean, however, that all of those meetings offer no value. The key isn’t to wipe our calendars clear. It’s to identify what meetings offer value and which we should skip.
Does your meeting have a clear agenda and purpose? Can you clearly define the reason you’re pulling everyone together, the people that need to be in the room, and the desired outcome for the meeting? Each tête-à-tête isn’t going to lead to direct, immediate, game-changing action, but it should move the ball forward. You should be able to leave with an action plan of next steps.
Sometimes it’s not the meeting that’s the problem. It’s the long, meandering, dragged out conversation that starts to chew away at your day and steal moments of productivity from your schedule. We’re really good about setting a start time. Let’s get better about identifying a time we’ll wrap things up too. When you reach the end of your allocated window, assess where you are, how much more time may be needed to complete the task or conversation at hand, and make a collective decision whether to continue the conversation or to reconnect at a future time.
Even the most creative, brightest minds benefit from teamwork. Sitting together and brainstorming can spark a cascade of bright ideas. Problems can begin to connect to solutions. Sure, we can dream, create, and breathe life into our own ideas. Yet, if we’re honest, even our solo efforts often involve conversations with confidants and mentors.
Even solo entrepreneurs benefit from outsourcing tasks and gathering advice. Conversations like this can be difficult in formats where give and take can be hard to manage. The text stream and the email limit the free flow of give and take, whereas a face-to-face meeting – even a video meeting – can openly accommodate collaboration and the free flow of ideas.
“We’re going to meet on Tuesday to discuss the new product launch” is not nearly as productive as “Tuesday’s marketing meeting will focus on a social media strategy for the new product launch.” You should walk through actionable items, being prepared to assign specific tasks to team members, with clear and measurable next steps, and a plan to follow up.
Take notes during your meeting. Whether you use technology to record and create an outline for you, or someone jots down the highlights, make sure there’s a record of decisions made, milestones identified, and next steps assigned. Those notes should be shared with everyone that participated.
Sometimes one topic will open a door to another issue that needs to be addressed. It’s okay to be adaptable and add the topics to your agenda if it’s applicable to those attending this meeting. You should also be prepared to table conversations that are not relevant to the team that’s gathered, and set aside topics that are too far off the track of the original agenda, or that will require more time and due diligence. If the new idea takes you away from a time-sensitive topic you started this meeting to discuss, or it’s not relevant to the full time, table it with the commitment to set up another time (with the right team) to work through that issue if it’s one that requires a meeting.
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