My name is Linda Secondari, and I’m a recovering meeting scheduler.

You may have noticed that my recent newsletters and social media have been preoccupied with thoughts and advice about meetings. "Why?" You might have thought. Well, I’ll tell you. I've noticed that my schedule seems to have become more crowded with meetings during the Pandemic. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Professionals now spend more than half the standard workweek—a full 21½ hours—in meetings, an increase of 7.3 hours a week just since the Pandemic began. *

I have to believe all of you must also be experiencing meeting overload. Frankly, the overwhelm triggered me a bit. In my past life, as Creative Director at Oxford University Press (OUP), I had a crazy meeting schedule. Often I was double or tripled booked. It was sort of a badge of honor amongst the management team. But it wasn't a very productive use of our time. Recently, when I saw my schedule begin to resemble my OUP calendar, I knew things had to change.

Tick Tock

Time is our most limited resource. Everyone’s time is precious. In business, we can hire more people and make more money, but the time we have is all the time we have, and it's because time is such a valuable and rare commodity that I want us to think about how we're using it. Meetings are a perfect example of time mismanagement, and there's something you can do about it.

A Meeting about Meetings?

Two weeks ago, I led a webinar about meetings. The irony of having a webinar about meetings isn't lost on me. You know what? My attendees were grateful that they'd invested the time in learning how to break the cycle of meeting overwhelm. In fact, many of them communicated with me after the webinar to share how their approach to meetings had changed based on what they'd learned.

Meetings have always been a problem, but recently things have gotten even worse! As I said at the onset, I am a recovering meeting scheduler. When I was the Creative Director at OUP,  I managed a team of  40+ designers and art directors worldwide; I scheduled LOTS of meetings. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was paying attention to my team and connecting with them personally and professionally. My schedule should be packed with meetings; I had eight direct reports! But you know what I've learned in hindsight? I was lazy. Many of those meetings were probably not necessary. Some of our meetings, like status check-ins, and updates, probably didn’t need to be meetings at all.

Don’t get me wrong, at OUP,  we had some epically wonderful meetings! We had great international team meetings where we alternated who chaired the meeting, and everyone had an opportunity to speak and present. We had amazingly creative brainstorming meetings with our Editorial and Marketing colleagues to hash out new publishing lists and to perfect our understanding of our core audience. Not all meetings are a waste of time, but we need to learn to be selective about the meetings we choose to host, schedule, and attend.

You’ve got meetings?
I’ve got answers.

It's good to keep the three different meeting types in mind when evaluating your meetings.

1. Information sharing meetings: This includes status meetings, check-ins, or one-on-one meetings. They can be small meetings between two or three people, or they can also be larger, including entire departments or divisions. 

Most of the time, these meetings can be eliminated, or their frequency can be reduced. Information can be efficiently shared by a written report, dashboard-type status trackers, asynchronous communication, or email.

2. Collaborative meetings: These involve various participants, including a facilitator (highly recommended), and the goal is to develop a creative solution for a problem. These benefit from real-time engagement from the participants, virtually or in person.

3. Decision-making meetings: These require engaged and informed participants. Sometimes decision-making meetings are preceded by informational meetings. Although Decision Making meetings benefit from real-time engagement, the preliminary informational portion can almost always be handled asynchronously. 

Once you know what kind of meetings you have, you'll be better able to determine which can be eliminated, reduced in frequency, or re-envisioned as asynchronous communications.

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Looking to maximize profitability and efficiency? (Who isn’t?) Through organizational design, I take a humanistic approach to how your business operates, developing systems that make work more streamlined, productive, and enjoyable for your users and your staff.

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Image credit: Brands&People unsplash.com/@brandsandpeople