How to Make Your Meetings Not Suck: 5 Strategies to Save Time, Energy

How many meetings do you have scheduled? Too many!

Most finance leaders say that whether they have two or 20!

Meetings take up a lot of time, which is OK … if they’re a valuable use of time.

Instead, most finance pros say meetings suck … time, energy and resources.

Proof We Need to Make Meetings Not Suck

More than 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings, a Bain & Company study found — 50% of those meetings are deemed unnecessary.

Still, we are bound to meet in the workplace, so we need to make them better.

Here’s proven advice to keep meetings valuable for everyone involved.

1. Set Ground Rules for All Meetings

Ground rules help keep everyone on track, respectful and focused, says Roger Schwarz, CEO of Roger Schwarz & Associates and author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results. He suggests setting, posting and using these guidelines for all meetings:

• State views and ask genuine questions. When people embrace this technique, you’ll get away from monologues and arguments and move toward sharing points of view and getting curious about differences in views.
• Share relevant information early. Then the group can work from a common set of facts.
• Use specific examples so everyone knows where you are now and where you’re headed.
• Explain reasoning and intent. That way people understand how everyone reached conclusions and where reasoning differs.
• Focus on the interest, not position. Identify the needs that must be met to solve the issue, rather than argue about the solution, to reduce unproductive conflict.
• Define next steps to ensure everyone is committed to moving forward.

2. Agree on Purpose

Meetings that don’t have an agreed-upon purpose and process go off track.

Get explicit agreement from everyone who’ll attend a meeting on the purpose and the agreed-upon guidelines you’ll follow. That can be a formal agenda that everyone signs off on ahead of time or a less formal, but binding, email that explains it.

Include: questions to be answered, steps to address your three or fewer agenda items, and required decisions to be made.

3. Agree on Roles

Everyone needs to know what he or she is expected to contribute to the meeting. Let people know if they are expected to:

• Share information
• Advise those who will make decisions
• Be part of a decision, and/or
• Listen to gain insight.

When people understand their roles, they know what to expect and what to focus on.

4. Prepare for Off-Track Situations

Even when you prepare a laser-focused meeting, discussions will sometimes force it off track sometimes.

When mini-topics come up – and need to be addressed – follow this rule: If you launch it, land it.

Have the person who raised the issue take responsibility for making sure it’s resolved. In most cases, the legwork can be done after the meeting and a solution can be agreed upon at the next meeting.

5. Make Everyone Accountable

Managers can’t take all responsibility for holding effective meetings. Ask for cynics, control freaks and anyone who just gets annoyed with wasted time to speak up.

When? Encourage people to speak up if they:

• Don’t see a clear purpose
• Don’t know their role
• Recognize the meeting is off track ,or
• If people aren’t following the ground rules the team already laid out.

Silently criticizing a meeting after the fact will only perpetuate the problem.