These are examples that apply to most companies. The meetings with no agenda. The meetings that start late and run
over. People show up not knowing what the purpose is, and they’re either thinking about all the other projects they could be doing during that time, checking their email on a mobile device, or browsing and posting on social media. Check out Patrick Lencioni’s book on this,  Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business shows that 30-50% of the time spent in meetings is wasted.

Expert opinions are often neglected.

Some people dominate meetings because they love to hear themselves talk. They may overpower the more reserved
participants who could be experts on a topic. However, they never speak up because the Type A personalities do not give them an opening, or the facilitator, if there is one, does not make sure their input is solicited.

Issues may be discussed, but are never resolved. Maybe this happens because people are afraid to address the elephants in the room due to workplace politics, or the root causes of the issues are never addressed. Nothing gets solved, there are no follow up items with specific people assigned to them with due dates, and these never get addressed at a later meeting. Ineffective meetings lead to lost revenue, wasted expenses, and missed opportunities.

You want your meetings to be more effective, with issues addressed and resolved. You want your meetings to be less
dreaded by your employees, a place where accountability is addressed and resolved, things get accomplished, and
challenges are not only discussed, they are solved.

After that, you can move on to discussing the next opportunities or challenges for the company. You want your company to achieve success to keep moving forward.

The only way to produce a different output from your meetings is to change the input.

This involves a structure where all meetings have a purpose and agenda. They begin and end on time, tasks are assigned to individual people or small groups, and there is follow-up on a specific due date. In the process, you have to address challenges and their root causes so you can solve them.

Lastly, you have to rate the effectiveness of each meeting, with everyone participating. If the rating scores are below a certain predetermined level, then you need to discuss what can be done to improve the meeting in the future. The meeting’s effectiveness needs to be addressed at the conclusion. Otherwise, the quality of the meeting will not improve in the future. It’s like a sports team gathering in a locker room after a game to do a quick assessment on what just happened during the game, while it is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Then, these points will be addressed one by one during the next practices.

Surmani Business Coaching can give you tips and provide tools to improve both the productivity and the effectiveness of your organization’s meetings.