MEETINGS - A WASTE OF TIME

  

Any meeting in the business or your personal world is called to solve problems efficiently. A board meeting tries to give direction to the company's operations; a meeting of the alumnus association of an institution increases your joy by renewing old friendships or even a kitty party is held to provide a couple of hours of fellowship and pleasant gossip. A business meeting is supposed to grapple with a current problem in hand, which requires personal contribution from all those who are invited.


In spite of such clear intentions and given the fact that all humans are social animals, why is it that many meetings end up wasting a lot of participants' time--which could have been gainfully employed (more productively) elsewhere. I am not going to dwell upon how a meeting should achieve the objectives that it sets for itself. I want to share my thoughts about how all of us can prevent a meeting from turning into a waster of time - as asset so precious.


For starters, let us take a quick look at some interesting statistics about how we spend time in our entire lifetime. Now, don't fight with me about some of these figures--they could be different for different individuals--just grasp the moral of the story. The figures have been arrived at by extrapolating time segments of a normal day over an average life span of 75 years. Do you know that….


  • We sleep for :: 22 years
  • We work for (office, etc.) :: 32 years
  • We are in the toilet for :: 2 years
  • We eat for :: 4.5 years
  • We are with family/children for :: 3 years
  • We socialize for :: 3 years


That leaves a balance of 8.5 years (about 11% of our lifetime) which surveys have proved are generally "not remembered" by the respondents. This is then the time which is believed to be "wasted" by us. Let us attack the number one potential enemy-a "meeting".


  1. Do not call a meeting unless you can put down on paper, the objectives that the meeting is supposed to achieve. Many a time, we deceive ourselves that it is all there in the "head", but research proves that writing down an objective or an idea on paper helps us to asses its importance and relevance much better--the idea may not appear as good, when we stare at the written word; and remember, no essays please--just a couple of words per thought are sufficient.

  2. Choose with care the persons you want to attend. Big omnibus meetings are good only in political rallies and all of us know how efficiency has to be given the go-by in these meetings. The best question that you can ask yourself is "Is this person's contribution relevant to the problem at hand?" Call the peon of the company, if the answer is in the affirmative and don't invite even your boss if you think the answer is in the negative.

  3. Ensure that everyone who is attending, knows the agenda (written list of the objectives of the meeting), well in advance. Make it mandatory for people to inform you if they cannot attend due to some reasons--this will give you a chance to possibly reschedule the meeting instead of being surprised at the eleventh hour.

  4. The biggest challenge is to start and end the meeting on time. It would be an excellent practice to pre-decide the starting and the ending time of any meeting. This tends to limit the unfocussed rambling which otherwise goes on in a meeting. Many meetings (business cum entertainment) have this objective of leisurely fellowship but let the unstructured part follow the formal one in which core issues are discussed.

  5. Remind everyone that once all of you are in the meeting, everyone is "equal" and no longer governed by the designation or hierarchy in the organization. If the quality of contribution from someone is not up to the mark, it is your responsibility to steer the discussion away. If someone is not tolerant or behaves like a stuffed shirt, or does not abide by the chairman's ruling, you probably made a wrong choice in including the person.

  6. The biggest benefit that a meeting can give is the brainstorming that it is supposed to generate. See that this aspect is faithfully adhered to. Encourage everyone to participate and more important to "listen" to the ideas being presented. There are many a chairman who will stifle new ideas at the first opportunity. Such meetings usually turn out to be a big waste of time for all participants.

  7. Meetings which turn out to be personal slanging matches between participants belonging to so-called opposite camps, are the biggest culprits in squandering everyone's time. A better forum to decide about such things is usually a boxing ring, but then how will we be able to call ourselves civilized?? A good ground rule would be to ensure that no person will be criticized--only ideas will be allowed to be commented upon.

  8. At the end, the chairman of the meeting should be able to paraphrase everything than transpired, within about five minutes. Research says that decisions of any meeting howsoever elaborate, can be summarized smartly, if they have been properly arrived at. Isn't it true that all important decisions can be stated, simply?? Conversely, more words are required to camouflage indecision. A perfect example of this is the series of meetings that go on between India and Pakistan officials on how to solve mutual problems. Since virtually nothing is achieved, we have long statements to tell us what has been achieved. Diplomacy of course, was never meant to be efficient or time conserving.

  9. The most important rule of an efficient meeting is of course, to stick to the declared agenda. This is common-sensical, but didn't you know that common sense is usually the rarest commodity available??

  10. The last important action that the chairman of the meeting needs to take is to circulate a report of the "expected actions" clearly mentioning the person responsible and the deadline. Brevity is of essence here and experts recommend broken sentences which convey the full meaning to the reader. The faster this is done, better will it be. Without this report, even an otherwise well-conducted meeting can turn out to be a time waster because no one remembered to act on the decisions taken.

As you must have realized, all the above rules will not be equally relevant to non-business meetings, but as I said, please grasp the moral of the story.


You may also ask me how you can save your time when most of the things that we have discussed above are to be implemented by the chairman of the meeting and you are just a helpless participant? I agree that it is primarily the chairman's job to ensure that others' time is not wasted. If there are ten persons in a meeting and it is supposed to last for say, one hour, the chairman has an asset of ten man-hours at his disposal--either to be used gainfully, or wasted. In fact, for this very reason, meetings have acquired this dubious distinction of being potentially the biggest wasters of time.


But there are many occasions when you will be in the chair--be it at your house to solve a family problem or in your department at office. Do you promise not to be a time-waster, then??


The author is a reputed management consultant and has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, after doing his Masters’ in Physics from IIT New Delhi. This new series of articles will try and question various beliefs that we hold without scrutiny. We Indians are known to have many “blind spots” in the way we think and live. The purpose here is to have a robust debate without in anyway belittling personal beliefs.


"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page." He invites reactions on his e-mail address creativepds@satyam.net.in