“The cost of unproductive meetings can be very high. A study of salaries and benefits from unproductive meetings involving 16 members of one company’s information technology department over a year showed unproductive meetings were costing the company $1.6 million per year.” — Mississippi Business Journal
You all have been there…the dreaded umpteenth meeting for the day, and nothing is happening! I thought this was an interesting fact in to what unproductive meetings really cost a company. Here’s my suggestions to help move meetings into something productive:
1. Have a clear agenda
2. Invite only the people who need to be there
3. Tell the people what they need to prepare for in advance
4. Start on time
5. Have a designated note take
6. Limit discussions to agenda items
7. Keep the meeting moving through the agenda
8. Define action steps and follow-ups for attendees
9. End on time
10. Send out follow up email to attendees with meeting notes, assigned action steps, and follow-ups
And the golden rule, don’t call a meeting for something that can be handled on a conference call or email exchange. In the end, everyone is happier…meetings are productive, and people can focus on work loads.
Out of the meeting,
Chris
I hear you Chris. We do meeting (and email) productivity training and find that 43% of the time spent in meetings is considered wasted. The average meeting lasts 57 minutes and the average knowledge worker takes 2.3 meetings a day and spends about 70 days per year in meetings. With 60 million knowledge workers at a conservative wage of $30/hour in the US, that is over $400 billion per year.
Our training program saves about 12 days per worker per year in meeting time, using many of the principles you state above. We also provide team building skills to motivate better meeting behavior and technical tips on how to e-schedule meetings more effectively.
We recently published a book on the subject “The Hamster Revolution For Meetings”
This is a follow up to our best selling “The Hamster Revolution: Manage Your Email Before It Manages You”