Stop useless meetings!
Most meetings are poorly run time-wasters. A disciplined approach to when, why, and how to meet can reclaim hours of productive time and dramatically improve organizational effectiveness.
Every hour wasted in a pointless meeting is an hour stolen from real leadership, decisive action, and the results your organization actually needs—yet the cycle continues because too few leaders dare to break it.
Participating in meetings is part of our work lives. It’s strange actually, because 71% of all senior managers do not even see meetings as productive! You wonder then, why do we spend so much time and money on it? We apparently can’t change it.
Key takeaways
- If you rigorously apply a three-point checklist—clear purpose, real contribution, and accountability for progress—to every meeting, you’ll quickly eliminate the waste and see tangible improvements in your organization’s effectiveness.
- Leaders must ensure that every meeting includes only those participants who have a genuine reason to be there and can drive decisions, rather than simply filling seats or sharing status updates.
- You can transform your meeting culture by demanding that every session directly advances organizational priorities, with participants holding each other accountable for follow-up and measurable progress.
In the last few years, some new techniques have been added to further improve meeting efficiency such as standup meetings and shorter meetings. It seems to me that these techniques can help a little, but many of these changes are mostly cosmetic. I think the real problem lies deeper.
Meetings can never be successful as long as it is not clear what the objective of a meeting is and people with decision-making power do not participate. These kinds of sessions, of which I have experienced numerous ones myself, often end up in:
Long-winded sessions with PowerPoint presentations. Who has not been in the room when someone gets 10 minutes to present, then the person is not able to manage the time, and nobody intervenes?
Meetings where it’s more about who has been invited to the table. Sometimes even who is sitting next to whom?
Sessions where status updates are given. But these status updates are in reality an exam where people are judged by the boss on the spot. Or meetings where participants that give status updates to each other ... End ... That’s it. No follow up.
Each meeting must always meet three conditions in order to be successful:
Each participant has a clear reason to participate in the meeting. Fewer people is often better.
Each participant can make a real contribution during the meeting.
Together, the participants can make progress on the priorities and actions of the organization. And they keep each other accountable for the progress.
If you rigorously apply this simple checklist of three points to all the meetings that you organize, you will start to see the changes from the bottom up.
In our practice we see a big difference with clients that have anchored the strategy execution method in the routine of their business. Each meeting is focused on their priorities and the actions that they have agreed upon. They are no longer distracted by things of a lower priority.
The true mark of leadership is not how many meetings you attend, but how relentlessly you protect your organization’s time and energy by demanding clarity, contribution, and accountability from every gathering.
Over to you.