The Science of Successful Meetings

According to a survey by the 3M Meeting Network, 50% of meeting time is unproductive and up to 25% of meeting time is spent discussing irrelevant issues. Do those numbers seem accurate to you? At your company, meetings might be extremely productive, or perhaps they are the biggest waste of time at your job. Meetings vary dramatically in style and productivity depending on the department and company, however it is a fair bet that every organization has meeting practices that should be revised or completely reimagined.


To ensure that your meetings increase revenue, enhance culture, and help you make allies instead of enemies, follow these 5 tips for successful meetings.

1. Don’t make waves.

Almost every meeting has a ripple effect. The impact of most meetings stretches beyond the meeting leader and attendees. Often, preparation for a meeting requires input and contributions from people not on the meeting invite list.  In addition, when the meeting starts, and all of the attendees are away from their desks, email inboxes, and phones, some responsibilities will likely need to be shouldered by a team member not in the meeting room, for the duration of the meeting. When colleagues pick up the slack for meeting attendees, who picks up the colleagues’ slack? Probably no one. Their work is most likely pushed aside for the time being. And if the extra work results in overtime, will the overtime eventually lead to burnout and turnover? Unfortunately, the number of turnovers that result from habitually unproductive meetings is probably higher than you would imagine.

To understand the potential reach of meetings, check out the Harvard Business Review article This Weekly Meeting Took Up 300,000 Hours a Year by Michael C. Mankins, a partner at Bain & Company. Mankins uses an interactive graphic to demonstrate the impact one meeting had on his company. At the end of the demonstration, Mankins concludes by saying: Research shows that 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings—a percentage that has increased every year since 2008. 

The lesson of the story? The ripple effect is seemingly endless, so be mindful of the waves you make with meetings. Minimize requests that will impact multiple team members. Be respectful of everyone’s time and efforts; both resources can easily be squandered. If you ignore the problem, the waste will be felt, and the consequences will probably be severe, even if the cause and effect cycle is not easy to see. 

2. Be selective.

Don’t invite more than 7 people to any meeting.  According to Decide and Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization, meetings decrease in effectiveness by 10% with each additional attendee, once the list of attendees exceeds seven.  And once your meeting reaches 16 or 17 attendees, go ahead and toss your objectives out the window. Meetings with that many attendees almost never lead to a conclusive decision that can drive action and results.

Think carefully about whom you invite to your meetings. If someone just needs a summary of the decisions made during the meeting, assign to a meeting participant the task of sending an update email after the meeting. Similarly, if someone has one item to address in a meeting that will cover multiple items, consider addressing that one item at the beginning of the meeting, and excusing anyone that doesn’t need to stay after that agenda item is covered.  Strictly limit the number of people that are involved in all discussions; your results will dramatically improve.

3. Know what matters. 

In the article Stop Wasting Valuable Time, Michael C. Mankins shares some additional insight from data collected by Bain & Company, including this fact: 80% of top management’s time is devoted to issues that account for less than 20% of a company’s long-term value. That is mind-blowing, right? It seems totally unrealistic until you stop and really think about it.

Surely you can identify some recent meetings that were organized to discuss relatively trivial items like the company Christmas card, or the location of the holiday party. Since these ridiculous time-wasters are easy to identify, these meetings are not the biggest threat to your company’s resources. Just stop them right now; problem solved.

There real danger is meetings that seem important, but actually are not necessary. For example, meetings that are called so the team can report company metrics are important but can easily be avoided by sending the metrics in an email. You can almost guarantee that your results will be exactly the same or better since you are not interrupting schedules and boring everyone to tears.

If you are getting your team together for a meeting because you want to build a sense of community, develop your culture with activities that either produce revenue, or rejuvenate employees and increase employee retention.

For example, instead of your weekly staff meeting, use those four hours a month for a happy hour mixer with your staff. The relaxed atmosphere will lead to genuine connections, authentic dialogue, and your employees will appreciate the break from the conference room. You can still discuss company metrics, or plan the holiday party, and the conversations will be more meaningful and enjoyable. If you want to use those extra four hours for an activity that will immediately grow your business, schedule a monthly hackathon to resolve pressing issues in the company.  The resulting solutions will be astronomically more valuable than your average staff meeting.

If you want to change your staff meeting style, don’t start by scheduling a meeting to discuss the change to staff meeting; make the executive decision, send out a short email with the update, and do it.


4. Forge a path.

Everyone knows that constructive meetings always start with a clear agenda, yet very few professionals utilize that wisdom.

Agendas get pushed off the priority list because everyone is so busy running from meeting to meeting, and trying to cram daily tasks, lunch, and big projects into the few, unscheduled pockets of time. If fewer meetings are scheduled overall, people will have more time to design a clear path for the meetings that are important enough to make it onto the calendar.

By forging a path for others to follow throughout the meeting, meeting leaders eliminate confusion, decrease the number of questions, and keep all meeting participants on the same track, moving towards a clear, common goal.

When you lead meetings, use the first slide of your PowerPoint presentation to present an agenda; use subsequent slides to keep the conversation aligned with the agenda.  If you want to go one step further, share the presentation with all meeting participants a few days before the meeting. The ideas discussed during the meeting will be more thoughtful and thoroughly researched since everyone had time to consider the agenda topics in advance. If you decide to go this route, send your presentation using Trackbat. With Trackbat, you can add interactive elements such as surveys, multiple choice questions, and audio. In addition, you can track who accessed the file, and which slides were viewed. Check out the Ethos3 demo to learn more about Trackbat features.

5. Don’t sit down.

The idiom get the creative juices flowing makes sense to anyone who has been in the zone, and felt the surge of ideas spring forth from a well of inspiration. Sometimes brilliant ideas happen in the shower; sometimes ideas come in the moments before falling asleep. Inspiration comes from many places, but it can be difficult to reproduce those moments of creative insight in an office environment – until now.

A recent study by Stanford researchers revealed that you can get the creative juices flowing by simply taking a walk. While walking, creative output increases by up to 60% The word walk might conjure up visions of a Sunday stroll through a flower-filled field, or a brisk jaunt through a park on an autumn afternoon.  While these types of walks will work wonders for your creativity, you can also get similar results by walking on a treadmill, even if your treadmill faces a blank, boring, white wall.  If you have a daily brainstorming session with your colleague, and it is freezing cold outside, take a walk around the office, or head to the gym together for a 30-minute walk on the treadmills. Once you have your creative idea, stop walking. Walking can actually hinder your ability to focus your thoughts, and bring your creative ideas into reality.

If your agenda is a not a good fit for a walking meeting, try a standing meeting. A study by the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis revealed that standing increases collaboration, creativity, and engagement.  By adjusting the physical dynamics in the meeting space, meeting attendees feel less territorial about their ideas, and more like a team working towards a common objective.  If you can’t stand for the entirety of a meeting, try standing for a period of time, then sitting, and then maybe stand again. Mix it up and see what happens.


Conclusion: Often, the hardest part of change is acknowledging that there is a problem. No one likes to admit that they have been doing things incorrectly. My advice: don’t sweat it. Cancel unnecessary meetings right now; your past errors will quickly be forgotten. Soon, you will be the office hero as schedules lighten, and productivity skyrockets.





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