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When Too Many Meetings Are Too Much





Do you feel crushed under wave after wave of titanic meetings? Do you feel like you cannot get any work done during the daytime? Are you finding yourself staying late to work well beyond the normal time to leave? You might not have a workload problem, but a structural efficiency problem at work.

Generally, the root cause might not be you. The whole organization must look at its own efficiency, crushed under its own processes and dead weight. Organizations tend to fall into their own internal processes and the concept of team is more valuable than individual effort and talent. Sadly, the organization becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. It becomes the running joke -- having a meeting to discuss a meeting.

Sometimes meetings are just not important enough to attend. We need to identify when meetings are necessary, eliminate the dead weight, and only hold the ones that bring value to the business.

According to Lain Stewart, the author of How Many Non-Value Add Meetings Do You Attend (or Hold)? most meetings add only 10 percent value to a business. "One of the pathologies that exists in organizations is the justification of jobs and roles by calling and attending meetings."

"Who's on first, who's on second?"

Andy's project team had an offsite meeting with a supplier on a crucial account. They needed everyone to be on the same page to deliver the software, needed for the next tax year, to a very important client. Andy showed up to the meeting early to get the room prepared. He waited for the members to arrive. All of the supplier's team showed up to the conference room ready to start. They had prepared for the meeting and had some information about their systems; now they just needed more from Andy's team to talk good compatibility. Andy was feeling nervous; he was the only one so far. He did not have any of the files to go over, which were at the main office.

Initially, Andy assumed his team and partner, Walter, were going to bring out the documentation for the project. He was getting nervous, because nobody had shown up. Andy began to think, "Did he have his calendar wrong? Was this supposed to be an online telecommute meeting?"

Then a few minutes before the meeting was to begin, Doug appeared -- much to Andy's relief. Doug sits down next to Andy and asks, "Where's Walt?"

Andy replied, "I don't know; weren't you supposed to bring the packets?"

Doug shook his head. "Walt told me he was stuck in a different meeting, and he handed them off to Chris."

Andy was feeling nervous and in a hush voice, "Chris is at the Turner meeting; he couldn't bring anything."

Doug replied, "Chris was supposed to bring them. Who assigned him to the Turner meeting?"

Andy was concerned. "I think Walt asked him to cover that meeting, while he is supposed to be here."

Doug spoke up to the rest of the team. "Thank you everyone for coming. We will have a limited meeting, since our packages -- which were supposed to show up -- never did. Is there anything we want to start to cover?"

Andy, under his breath, said, "This is a classic 'Who's on first, who's on second' comedy of errors."

5.2 Too Many Meetings Keep Teams From Core Business

When companies get into too many meetings, it starts to restrict workers and team members from really doing their core work.

Spending all the time in meetings does not add value per person to the business. Often times it is considered wasted time.

Sometimes too many meetings cause "Management by PowerPoint." Leadership is not involved with everyday business process flow. When management becomes dependent on PowerPoint slides to keep them in the loop, they get out of touch with the reality of everyday business operations.

Too many meetings take away from the leadership and managers' true responsibilities. Their real responsibility is to eliminate any potential barriers for their team to achieve business goals.

Instead of attending meetings, the other primary responsibility of the functional leader is to handle career management of workers, not attend meetings all day.

When managers are attending multiple meetings, they are difficult to access. When an issue comes up that needs immediate attention, they are not easily available for their staff to get help.

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