Saving Time In Meetings

Saving time in meetings can be especially valuable for executives, as their meetings are arguably vital to the persistence and development of a business. But unfortunately, these meetings can also take a lot of time, so it’s important for executives to be able to use that time efficiently.

What measures can you take to save time and streamline your executive meetings?

The Plague of Meeting Time Waste

Meetings may be an arguably necessary mode of communication and work at the highest level of your organization – but that doesn’t prevent them from being massive time sinks at times. There are many ways that meetings can deviate from their intended purposes, including unfocused communication, distractions, deviations from the agenda, and more.

This is complicated by the fact that the amount of time wasted in a meeting is effectively multiplied by the number of people participating in it. A meeting that wastes only an hour may not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but if you have a dozen participants in that meeting, you’re effectively wasting 12 hours of time.

This is especially egregious at the executive level, as most of your participants are going to be busy executives with lots of other responsibilities and relatively high salaries. Wasted time in an executive meeting is, by definition, much more impactful than wasted time in any other meeting.

So what are the best strategies to employ?

Objective One: Hold Fewer Meetings

The first and best option is to simply hold fewer meetings. Some executives and business leaders exploit every opportunity they can to hold a meeting, perhaps because they’re not comfortable with any other form of communication or perhaps because they’re blind to the potential of meetings wasting time. Getting together in a room with other people in suits can feel productive, even if the material you’re covering or the way you cover it aren’t.

The solution here is to take a razor to the number and nature of meetings you hold, focusing only on the meetings that are most important to the survival and flourishing of your business. It’s not always easy to delineate which meetings are necessary and which ones are superfluous, but it’s much easier when you have the objectives of your business in mind. What exactly are you trying to accomplish, and how is the meeting going to help? If you can’t precisely identify how a meeting is going to help you accomplish some objective, you probably shouldn’t hold it.

Objective Two: Put the Right People in Charge

Next, focus on putting the right people in charge. When you have competent, experienced leaders determining which meetings to hold, when to hold them, and how to execute them, meetings tend to flow much more smoothly. Hopefully, you already have a competent team of executive leaders in place, but if you don’t, you can always supplement them.

A fractional CMO, for example, works as a consultant in a contracting capacity. Hiring a fractional CMO is relatively inexpensive, but could give you temporary and meaningful access to someone with in-depth knowledge of corporate marketing interests. Additionally, because you’re paying them for their time and insights, they’re going to be much more judicious about how they utilize that time and how they interact with the people within your organization.

Objective Three: Prepare Adequately

One of the secrets to avoiding time waste in meetings is to spend more time preparing for a meeting. This may seem somewhat contradictory, since in some ways, it’s simply shifting when the time expenditure occurs. But preparing for a meeting in advance typically presents an individual burden, rather than a burden on the group, thereby allowing the group dynamics to flow much more smoothly. Spending an hour before the meeting as an individual could help save 10 hours of collective time when the actual meeting occurs.

These are some of the most important ways to prepare:

Have a clear purpose.

Every meeting you hold should have a clear purpose. Simply meeting to go over the state of things isn’t likely to be productive. What are you trying to achieve, and how are you going to achieve it?

Choose participants wisely.

The meeting planner should be ruthless in deciding who is going to attend the meeting. It’s tempting to pile lots of people onto the invite list, but this generally isn’t productive. In most meetings, it’s better to keep the participant list tight and focused on only the most relevant parties. Anyone else with a fleeting interest in the meeting can receive concise notes afterward.

Schedule tightly.

According to Parkinson’s law, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This holds true in the realm of executive meetings. If you schedule an hour for the meeting, it’s going to take at least an hour. If you schedule the same meeting for 45 minutes, participants will likely be motivated to complete the discussion in 45 minutes. Consider scheduling meetings for less time than you think you need; you might be surprised at how much you can get done in these tighter parameters.

Choose the right format.

Next, choose the right format for the meeting. In-person meetings can be very valuable, but they’re less convenient. Video or audio meetings might be preferable in some circumstances.

Equip participants with requisite knowledge.

Every meeting participant should know exactly what they’re responsible for bringing to the table and exactly how they should participate during the meeting. Give each participant all the knowledge they need to contribute productively long before the meeting happens. Meeting attendees should go into the meeting with sufficient knowledge and materials; make it clear what these are and set expectations for participation proactively.

Encourage punctuality.

Executives are understandably busy, so you should expect at least some participants to be at least a few minutes late at least some of the time. However, you can avoid significant time waste by encouraging more punctuality and starting your meetings on time.

Set an agenda.

Each meeting you hold should have a clear agenda, sent to participants in advance of the meeting. Create an outline of discussion points, framed by the main objective of the meeting.

Objective Four: Stay on Task

After preparation, your job is to stay on task during the meeting. In other words, you want to use the actual meeting time as effectively and productively as possible.

Appoint a good leader.

Having a good leader in the meeting is indispensable. The executive in charge of hosting the meeting should concretely follow the agenda and identify time waste as it occurs. Overall, they should conduct the meeting in a way that maximizes achievement of the identified objectives.

Follow the agenda.

Hopefully, you’ve prepared a thorough meeting agenda already. Now is the time to put it to good use. While high-level executive meetings won’t always flow exactly as intended, you should make an effort to keep a focus on the most important items of discussion.

Curtail tangents.

In line with this, it’s the meeting leader’s job to curtail tangents. Exploring a topic doesn’t require thorough exploration of every detail related to that topic. And, separate but related lines of discussion should be kept brief.

Identify opportunities for out-of-meeting work.

Side conversations about only partially relevant objectives should be shut down and encouraged to be conducted elsewhere. If two meeting participants need to resolve a separate issue, they should do so outside the bounds of this meeting, so as not to waste anyone else’s time.

Objective Five: Reflect and Adapt

Your job isn’t over when a meeting comes to a close. After the meeting, and for some time after, you should make an effort to reflect on how the meeting unfolded. You can also use this time to speculate about ways to improve future meetings.

You can do this in a variety of ways. One of the most common methods is to encourage the leader of the meeting to briefly analyze how the meeting went. They can make a list of actionable takeaways based on their perception, such as refining how they choose meeting participants or how they set future agendas.

It’s also a good idea to conduct regular surveys, prompting your meeting attendees to offer their own insights. Do they feel like this meeting was productive? Do they feel like it was focused and on task? If they have any concerns about how the meeting unfolded, do they have any suggestions about how to improve future meetings? Take this feedback seriously and try to incorporate it. It may require several rounds of experimentation before you figure out the right executive meeting rhythm for your organization.

Executive meetings have the potential to be incredibly productive and valuable for your organization. But, questions of productivity and effectiveness must always be measured against the time and monetary investments on the other side of the equation. By thoroughly eliminating instances of time waste, you can keep your meetings on track, spend less time, and ultimately achieve more in pursuit of your business goals.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Sora Shimazaki; Pexels; Thank you.