Newsflash Managers: 90 Percent of Meetings Are a Waste of Time

In this day and age, technology has made it easier to get work done.

Computers speed up many processes that used to take longer, including writing and documenting information. Phones have replaced the need for face-to-face contact, in most cases. And the Internet and e-mail have pretty much eliminated the need for meetings.

I recently sat in an hour and a half-long meeting to watch a manager’s presentation on the future of his department. The presentation itself was only about 30 minutes, but there were many technical issues that needed to be worked through before the meeting could start.

The projector wasn’t working. It wasn’t reading the manager’s computer for some reason and so it kept showing a blank screen. He tinkered with it for about forty minutes, then ended up having to call the IT desk and have them walk him through setting it all up.

My team and I sat in that conference room for almost an hour waiting for the technical issues to be resolved so the meeting could begin.

There are several ways this meeting could have been more effective, such as:

• Turning it into an online meeting—using a program like WebEx or GoToMeeting—that everyone could watch from their desk. That way, everyone could keep working until it was time for the meeting to start, and no one would have to leave their work area to take part in it.
  
  This would also remove the technical issues because with a program like WebEx, you watch someone else’s computer screen on your own computer.
  
  
• E-mailing the presentation to everyone and asking for questions to be submitted by e-mail, if there were any. Since the manager basically read right from the PowerPoint word-for-word, there was really no need for all of us to be sitting in a conference room together in order to understand the presentation.
  
  
• Having everything set up before the meeting starts. This would require the presenter to arrive earlier than everyone else does, but doing so would save valuable time for the attendees.

Eliminating Pointless Meetings
Yes, sometimes meetings do need to happen. But most meetings—I’d say about 90 percent (but it could be higher)—are a waste of time.

You can pretty much eliminate all pointless meetings by asking yourself the following questions prior to sending a meeting invite:

• What is the purpose of this meeting?
• Is this something that can be resolved through e-mail or instant message?
• Can I just go directly to one person to take care of it?
  
  

It’s important to ask yourself these questions before you send out that meeting invite. When an issue can easily be resolved through another means, such as an e-mail, it’s better to handle it that way.

And if, after you ask yourself all three of those questions, you still feel like a meeting is necessary, schedule one. But here are some important things to keep in mind:

• Create a meeting agenda prior to sending the invite out. This will help you to know exactly what needs to be covered in the meeting. It will also serve as a meeting “guide” to help keep everyone on-task so the meeting can start and end on time.
  
  
• Use the agenda to determine who needs to be in the meeting. The bare minimum should be invited to the meeting. Many meetings have people in them who don’t necessarily need to be there. Only pertinent people should attend the meeting. They can inform others on their team about what came up in the meeting through e-mail later on.
  
  You also want to ask yourself: “In order to accomplish my meeting goal, who absolutely needs to be in the meeting? What information is needed from each necessary person?”
  
   You’ll want to add what you need from each person into the meeting agenda. That way the attendees know what they have to bring to the table the day of the meeting.
  
  
• Send the agenda to all attendees prior to the meeting so they can adequately prepare for the meeting. This will help ensure everyone is on the same page.

By taking some time to think before you send a meeting invite, you can reduce pointless meetings, leaving more time for actually getting something done at work.

In this day and age, technology has made it easier not to have meetings.