Are you sick of meetings that are not effective?

Please, no more BAD meetings!

Now – I love meetings

However, most people are sick of meetings… because most meetings are not effective.

In the many years I’ve been in business and leadership, I‘ve come across my fair share of brilliant thinkers. However there have been significantly fewer times that something or someone has educated me on “how to run an effective meeting”.

No-more-meetings
There has to be a better way!

Summary

  1. The typical meeting rundown…
  2. Statistics
  3. My meeting planner tips

The typical meeting rundown…

Raging-bull_meetings
  • Someone sends a meeting invite out with a purpose for the meeting
  • There are empty seats (late comers) at the time the meeting was scheduled to start
  • An agenda is handed out (sometimes there is no agenda)
  • People at the meeting listen and some share their opinions about their problem with the problem at hand
  • Many tangents are shared and discussed
  • They sometimes reach a decision making time before the allotted meeting time is finished and then cannot agree on a way forward (the solution or result)
  • Another meeting is scheduled after the key people have done some further research on the problem(the reason for the first meeting).

Sometimes I think Jeff Bezo’s “2 pizza meeting rule” or Gary V’s meeting mantra is worth thinking about, however I have found and now live by a more structured and fulfilling method of achieving great results through every meeting I run.

they say “practice makes perfect”, but “they” also say “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity”.

We must either all be brilliant at running meetings or insane not to change the way we run them – you just can’t have it both ways!

Statistics

The US alone has 11 million formal business meetings each day and wastes $37 Billion in unnecessary and ineffective meetings p/year.

…from the good old US of A (2017). 

We all know that most statics are made up on the spot… but I think these have some hard hitting truths, even if they are not 100% accurate for every industry, vertical and geographical location.

  • 37 percent of employee time is spent in meetings
  • managers attend more than 60 meetings per month
  • 47% consider too many meetings the biggest waste of time
  • 39% of meeting participants admitted to dozing off during a meeting
  • Over 70% brought other work to meetings
  • it is estimated that 25-50% of meeting time is wasted
  • The researchers found that the more meetings employees attended, the more exhausted they felt and the higher they perceived their workload to be.

 

I’m betting there are $trillions of dollars wasted each year on wages with people attending meetings that don’t actually achieve the result that the meeting was called to achieve.

Would you enjoy going to meetings if they actually fixed the issues in your department, team, operations, business, finances or relationships?

Harvard Business Review research

We surveyed 182 senior managers in a range of industries: 

  • 65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work
  • 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient
  • 64% said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking
  • 62% said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together 
head-scratch_meetings

Our Meeting Planner Tips

  1. Plan the meeting,with a time and place – guiding it through an agenda to the outcome(s) you want to achieve by having the meeting
  2. only invite the key people(via a calendar invite with a time and place – keeping it professional) who are needed to make the outcome happen (the reason for your meeting)
  3. let everyone invited have the meeting agendaa few days in advance of the meeting
  4. decide on a time that suits all attendees
  5. the meeting only goes ahead if all are present who are needed to achieve the desired result
  6. have one facilitator who can keep the meeting on track
  7. allow everyone to share their thoughts on the discussion point 
  8. If all are not agreed on the correct way forward because of a difference of opinion 
  9.    A) make a list of the problems that are not directly related with making the decision (the reason you called a meeting) and assign the responsibility of solving those problems to the relevant manager.
  10.    B) make sure someone has the authority to make a decision that everyone can take away and run with.  

If you want to know more about our meetings playbook, follow the link!

https://meetings.engagebay.com/MatthewBenn

We have developed a meeting facilitators training course to help improve the effectiveness of all your meetings.

This also has the knock on effective of reducing project times, lowering project cost, increasing project delivery under budget and on time as well as increasing revenue and profit… surprisingly and outrageously effective wouldn’t you say?

Book your management team in for our “Outrageously Effective Meetings” training course or a free strategy consultation to assess how else we might be able to help you grow your business.

Finally

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About the Author

Matthew Benn is the founding partner of Alongside Business Consulting. He has been a senior BD and sales leader for 12 years, as well as being a small business owner for more than 8 years; recently starting Alongside Business Consulting (his fourth business). He really enjoys the challenges and successes that come with developing people and growing businesses, hence has taken these passions and started the management consulting firm with a twist. The plan is to help business owners take control of their destinies and build their businesses simply…Business Growth Simplified.

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