The Cost of Ineffective Meetings

Everyday there are 11 million meetings in America. This is over 4 billion meetings a year. Many managers spend half of their workday in meetings, and most organizations spend between 7 and 15 percent of their personnel budget directly on meetings. Some recent studies indicate that up to half of meeting time is wasted. People come late, don’t have an agenda, don’t know why they are meeting, wander off the topic (if there is a topic), and in frustration start to chat about where they went to dinner last night.

Some of the effects of ineffective meetings are:
• High frustration with meetings
• A tendency of employees to come to meetings late, which makes the meetings even more inefficient
• Wasted time and money (billions of dollars)
• More meetings are needed to accomplish desired tasks
• Employees have less time to do other work
• Low morale
• High project turnover rates

How did things get so bad?

Many people have never experienced well run efficient meetings. They have no model for a good meeting, no opportunity to increase their skills, and have generally given up on meetings. Furthermore, organizational cultures enforce bad habits once they have started. If meetings tend to start 15 minutes late, people think, “That is just how things are. They have always been that way and there is no reason to hope for anything different.” Moreover, improving meetings can be just another thing for an already overworked workforce to take on, so it is easy to avoid it. And, most managers don’t consider the true cost of unproductive meetings.

But there is hope

Teaching people in your organization basic meeting skills is possible, and it can make a huge difference. I read recently that Intel Corporation gives all new employees a training on effective meetings. They also have three posters on the walls in its conference rooms. They read: Do you know the purpose of this meeting? Do you have an agenda? Do you know your role? These questions are not complicated. But making sure you have answers to them before starting a meeting does take discipline.

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