There are too many meetings. We all have better things to do with our limited time, but we end up in numerous unproductive meetings. Meetings are a very inefficient way to accomplish tasks, and yet every manager will spend 35% to 50% of his or her time sitting around tables, anxious to be doing something else.
Why are so many meetings called when we all should know better? How can meetings be prevented, or at the very least, how can we avoid hosting and attending the unproductive ones?
In this paper we will discuss:
- why meetings fail
- when is it appropriate to call a meeting
- what are the alternatives to conventional meetings - how to spot the meetings that should be avoided
Definitions: meetings vs. conferences
This discussion concentrates on typical business meetings. These are the gatherings of colleagues and suppliers (service companies) which are a routine part of the business process.
Business meetings should not be confused with conferences. Everyone likes conferences. They are, for the most part, entertaining as well as informative and are attended voluntarily.
Conferences are not (normally) intended to generate a specific set of defined outcomes. Conferences are largely social events, whereas meetings are not.
Business meetings are attended out of necessity. They are meant to be productive. They are supposed to have defined purposes and result in clearly measurable outcomes and action items.
Meetings are called to permit discussion and decision making. There is (or should be) an expectation of results ? information should be distributed, debate held, and choices made.
Conferences are one-way presentations of opinions. They are not ?meetings? in the sense that they focus on interaction and decision making. Participants at conferences are not individually important. In a business meeting every individual in attendance should be key.
Quality control at conferences
While there are many differences between meetings and conferences, they are fundamentally alike in terms of the ingredients for their success.
You go to conferences to learn something by listening to speakers and attending workshops. The quality of a conference is dependent entirely on:
- the planning of the event - the management of the process
- the level of preparation by those making presentations
All three ingredients must be in place. Weakness in any one of the three ingredients will result in a poor conference experience.
The quality of a conference is directly related to the degree to which these ingredients are expertly executed.
We would all begin to avoid conferences if they routinely failed to be interesting, well-planned, or well-organized. We try to avoid meetings for these very same shortcomings.
Why Meetings Fail
Quality control for meetings
Business meetings are smaller than conferences. They have all the same requirements and expectations of conferences, but unfortunately it is often the case that no one takes responsibility for quality control. Planning, management, and preparation are treated as optional, or are performed superficially.
Organizers of most business meetings focus their planning efforts on gathering people together ? the more the merrier. Details of what will happen when they are all together are left largely to chance or to a vague outline.
The irony is that business meetings are actually more complex than conferences. Meetings are not for entertainment, they are not normally limited to one-way deliveries of information. As a result of complex objectives, successful meetings are more difficult to stage than conferences, and yet they receive significantly less planning and management effort.
Keys to success
The keys to the success of business meetings are the same as those for conferences, with the addition of follow up.
- Planning - Preparation
- Process management - Follow-up
Since meetings are intended to result in specific outcomes (usually decisions and action items), follow-up is necessary to ensure that time spent at a meeting was not ultimately wasted.
The principal reason that most meetings fail or are unproductive is that no one takes management responsibility to ensure that the necessary ingredients are taken care of. Conferences have meeting managers who concern themselves with the many planning details. Most meetings, however, are just not taken seriously enough.
