5.3 Decreases in Individual Creativity
Holding too many meetings starts to focus on the collective process, not the individual talent. Meetings start to stifle creativity.Having many meetings to achieve a task, people fall into the "groupthink" problem. Barbara Streibel explains: "Groupthink is the tendency of a group of people to seek unanimous agreement in spite of facts that would contradict such agreement." (Streibel, 2004)
As meetings pile up on top of each other, the process starts to restrict individuals from creative ideas outside of their own group. They cannot exchange other ideas with areas outside of their department, because they become compartmentalized.
An overload of meetings causes members to work within their own area. The term used is "staying within their silos, from top down." They dedicate time in all the meetings for people hosting them, not contributing value to the business process.
Too many meetings stifle cross-team functional teams. When several departments require multiple meetings, it becomes difficult to share knowledge with the other teams. This hurts the exchange of ideas in a cross-functional team.
5.4 Too Many Meetings Makes People Resent Going to Them
When companies experience too many meetings, it becomes a competition for each member. The host is trying to get resources to attend their meetings against other leaders.
People begin to attend meetings for the sake of attending meetings; they becomes resentful, because they feel it is wasting their time.
Team members start to feel pressure and frustration, because they feel they cannot get their job done during the normal business hours.
Team members see no visible progress happening in poorly led meetings; they become frustrated and question the value of them.
Many team members see meetings as non-value added work, while some managers see it the opposite way. In reality, meetings are considered necessary, but should be limited. (May, 2013)
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