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5.5 Too Many Meetings Become the Communication Tool
The meeting becomes a communication tool for managers, instead of individual discussion.
Too many meetings pushes managers into a marginal role; they cannot get feedback on their behaviors and actions.
In the article, "Have More Meetings (But Keep Them Short), Matthew May explained, "I learned that the Toyota project teams held a completely opposite view of the 'meet and confer' philosophy held by most organizations. The 'confer' part was held outside the meeting, conducted by individuals in one-on-one dialogues, so that by the time the meeting was held, all team input had been gathered, and an informal consensus had been achieved." (May, 2013)
Too many meetings drive a wedge between leadership and employees; they begin to feel they do not matter. The goal is to make the project or meeting leadership happy, not contribute to the company.
5.6 Doing Offline Work Versus Meetings
To help make the business efficient, the organization should strive to accomplish more offline work, and less time in meetings. Managers must trust their employees, and empower them make decisions.
When the time comes to make a business decision, simple and effective solutions are the responsibility of offline work. The employee makes the simple decision, and the manager confers it.
Moving to more decisions offline helps turn the company from a process-based organization into a product/service based one. The company can finally get back to its core business, not waste time working on business processes.
With too many meetings, companies engulf themselves in how to accomplish the task, and who will approve it. Efficient businesses have their employees do the tasks without supervision.
Efficient companies trust and allow employees to do the work and make business decisions. If an employee makes an honest mistake, management does not punish the employee, but corrects it and moves on.
When the company switches to employee-based decision-making offline, fewer meetings are required for projects. This opens up more time for the team members to work on core business solutions.
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