Say "meeting" in most workplaces or organizations and employees start to roll their eyes and managers cringe. For most organizations, meetings are a necessary evil often dictated by tradition - traditions that some say ought to be changed.
Richard I. Winwood, a Salt Lake businessman and former executive at Franklin Quest, said that as he conducted time-management seminars across the country, he found that inffective meetings was among the top concerns of managers."Over and over again meetings surfaced as a major time robber within organizations including companies that I felt would be pretty good at meetings - Intel, Hewlett Packard," said Winwood,"Most people look at it as if it is a mystery. `We have bad meetings, what can we do?' Meetings, taxes, death - they all sort of happen and what can you do about them. It is a classic out-of-control situation."
Human resource managers usually aren't trained to help improve meetings in the workplace. Most meeting behavior for staff and management is learned by watching others.
"Most learn how to conduct meetings by attending meetings. So when they conduct a meeting, they work from their past experience coming from a bad meeting," Winwood said.
And the problem is compounded by a trend toward more meetings. Business professionals spend between 25 percent and 60 percent of their time in meetings, according to the 3M Meeting Network. High-paid managers are devoting more hours in meeting rooms. Executives reported that the amount of stress caused by time spent in meetings rose from 17 percent to 22 percent between 1993 and 1995, according to one study.
"Meetings are actually increasing because of the influence of the Japanese structure and how we work in total management groups," said Scott Trotter, president of Keystone International Institute, Murray. Trotter's company offers the seminar developed by Winwood to help businesses have "time effective meetings."
"What we teach is group productivity. What do you do when you get together in a group to stay productive and make things happen, how you get things done," Trotter said.
Keystone trys to make meetings more productive by addressing some of the biggest problems with meetings. The top 10 include:
- Side issues predominate
- No results or follow-up
- Objectives unclear
- Lack of preparation
- Too long
- No agenda
- Dominating personalities
- Meeting unecessary
- Agenda not followed
- Too much socializing
"If you distill all of this down and come up with one principle that is overarching in solving these problems, it is planning. It is deciding what you want to do with this meeting, what is the product you have when you finish this meeting and work toward while you hold the meeting," said Winwood.
He says an agenda and planning are essential to controlling wayward meetings. After planning, Winwood says that there shouldn't be more people than needed in a meeting to solve a problem. Keystone recommends a group of six or fewer for effective meetings.
"When you are close to that (six people) you have to justify more people. Make sure you have the critical mass there to solve the problem or get to the product that you want," he said.
Winwood also suggests that every meeting ought to have a name, forcing planners to have an objective. Meetings for meetings' sake should be eliminated The value of regular staff or management meetings should be weighed. For example, could a well-prepared weekly staff meeting be held every other week and still accomplish the same objectives?
"It is not that meetings are bad. Meetings are an important valid part of management discipline, and it is how to reach organizational objectives," Winwood said.
Winwood tells how one manager ended all meetings in his organization. The meeting ban didn't last very long, but the meetings that were wasting time and weren't necessary were discontinued.
Chance one-on-one meetings around the office may also cut into productivity. Winwood recommends strategies for making such encounters more manageable. Instead of asking a colleague if they "can talk for a minute" be realistic about the amount of time it might take to cover the issue at hand and say "Joe, do you have 15 minutes to discuss . . . " The person being interuppted for such a meeting can also ask questions to help determine whether the meeting is appropriate at that time. Such techniques can help both participants determine whether it wise to go forward with the meeting then or better to reschedule.