Hello Bart, welcome to the studio.

Thank you.

Today we are going to talk about efficient meetings.

Yes.

But are we not meeting efficiently then?

Not really, no. It is one of the most common complaints from everyone who participates in meetings and those who organize them: that things move very slowly, the right decisions aren’t made, and the right people aren’t present. It’s often not a motivating environment at all. So, most people list meetings as the number one waste of time in their schedules.

So, just abolish them.

Abolishing them would certainly be convenient for many people in terms of time management, that’s for sure. But they are necessary. I mean, from the moment you collaborate with others, you obviously need moments to reach agreements. Moments to decide things, to talk things through, and to clarify. So in that sense, it really is necessary to meet. However, the way it’s done is very rarely given proper thought.

And how should it be done?

One of the biggest things you could call it… we call it a paradigm shift. A paradigm is essentially a problem-solving strategy, and we need to change that. Very often people say: ‘Oh, we need a meeting, let’s see what the agenda items are.’

Yes.

Actually, it would be better to work the other way around and ask: ‘Is it even necessary for us to be physically in the same room together?’ If it’s about sharing information, for example, you might be better off sending an email. Or you could post it on Yammer or an intranet. Then everyone can read it at their own pace, and everyone has the same information.

When they have the time for it, yes.

So it’s really about completely rethinking the way meetings take place. And you should ideally do that by first looking at an objective. The agendas as they are currently drafted are often: ‘I’m coming to talk about this topic, then someone else talks about that, then we have to discuss this as well,’ and so on.

And that’s assuming there even is an agenda. Because how many meetings are organized weekly just because we’re ‘supposed’ to sit together every week?

Yes, but it’s in the calendar, so it just has to happen.

Yes.

Now, even there, if you look at it, there are certainly objectives where you could say, ‘Okay, we’re getting together,’ but then there’s a teambuilding aspect. You have to be brave enough to name that. But then you might as well go out for pizza with the whole team in the evening. That might be just as good for strengthening group spirit. It doesn’t have to be a boring meeting with a list of agenda items that must be rattled off just because that’s how it’s done. So it’s really about looking at the objective of every single item. ‘Oh yes, for this topic, the objective is information sharing. Here we need to make a decision. There we need to form an opinion.’

But if you say information sharing, is it then by definition always an email? Because the problem with email is that sometimes it just doesn’t get read.

Yes, or it’s misinterpreted, and so on. So you have to look at: what is the actual objective behind it? Why do you want people to have that information? Do they need to change their behavior, for example? Is there a new access procedure for the intranet tomorrow? If so, you’ll have to do it differently. For example, if the server has downtime because maintenance is planned, people will suddenly be without internet and will have to plan their work differently. If they need to get a very important proposal out to a government agency by noon, it’s useful to know that in advance.

Yes.

So there too, it’s about looking at the objective of the info sharing. If it’s just to keep people informed—pure background information—an email works. Is the intention that people adopt a certain behavior as a result? Then you have to look at the context. Is everyone going to immediately push back and say, ‘We’re not doing that’?

Yes.

Then you have to motivate them. Then the objective is to motivate people, or to convince them of the utility of a new procedure, for example. Rethinking that entire piece and only then choosing a medium—which could be anything, even within a meeting you have different tools—would work much more efficiently.

So it could be that you choose a meeting, a video conference, a phone call, whatever.

Yes. Or you might say: ‘Look, we’re not going to sit around a table in the meeting room; we’re going to cover an entire wall and work with a post-it session because we’re generating ideas, or we’re going to organize an open space.’ Those are all techniques to achieve certain things. And not necessarily in the typical meeting setting, all sitting politely around a table for two hours blocked out in the calendar.

Basically, it comes down to this: most of the work happens beforehand.

Yes, ‘the price of success is always paid in advance.’ That’s a very beautiful saying, and it applies to so many things. It applies to negotiating, and it applies to meetings too. So that means you really have to think carefully. Many people hesitate because it means a lot of work beforehand. True, but your meeting will be much more efficient. And maybe it’s finished in fifty minutes instead of two or two and a half hours.

Yes, because that’s also a frequently heard problem. People saying: ‘I have to be at this and that meeting, but I’m just sitting there and I actually have a lot of other things to do.’

Yes, of course. Because we have this idea that the meeting is from ten to twelve and those people are all invited in one bulk email. And then people have to accept it or not. And maybe they only have something to contribute to agenda item 5, say, generating ideas for a new marketing campaign, for example.

Yes.

And all the other things don’t benefit them at all. And honestly, they just fill up the room, consume a lot of oxygen, and annoy the chairperson because they are working on their laptop or iPad at that moment. And the chairperson then feels insecure about that. So much wasted energy. Whereas you’d be better off saying: ‘I only invite those who add value to the meeting.’

Yes, sometimes you’re in a meeting with a lot of people, a certain topic is discussed. There are two or three people who have a very well-founded opinion on it. Many others also have their ideas…

Yes, that’s actually a great example of how the wrong medium was chosen. To start with: within the world population, a good half is introverted and a good half is extroverted. Who speaks the most? Usually, the extroverts. Especially if the meeting isn’t well-prepared, an introvert suddenly has to answer on the spot. And that doesn’t fit their personality style. So that alone—the different personalities. On top of that, the egos within groups of people—and they are always there—who want to be heard, who might reformulate the same viewpoint in different words; it’s absurd. So in that sense, you’d be better off using a completely different medium, a completely different technique to get equal input from everyone. That could be an open space, for example, where you work in a specific way to generate input and form an opinion. Period.

And then you often arrive at a different decision-making process.

Absolutely.

Perhaps a better decision-making process?

More balanced. You’re going to get much more input. People build on each other, listen to each other, build on ideas that are written down somewhere… Talking is, of course, surreal. Person one talks and everyone waits until he or she is finished. Then comes person two…

Except in politics…

There we all interrupt each other. There might be a few more egos there, who knows. So in that sense, that is obviously not the right way to form an opinion quickly. You are much faster if you do it all in parallel in a completely different way. Then you might have many more ideas in ten minutes than by listening to one or two people for ten minutes.

Is that also the reason why people are having standing meetings nowadays?

Naturally—and this has to do with your body—after fifty or sixty minutes, you are really exhausted. You feel it in your back.

Slumping a bit, yes.

And then people want to get it over with. So that also means people are then somewhat non-verbally, physically forced to stay very efficient and alert. Whereas, if I’m sitting comfortably, leaning back, maybe with my laptop, and if I hear a word I’ll react but otherwise I’m busy with my own emails, then that meeting can last five hours. I’m working in the meantime anyway. And that, of course, is not very useful.

Thank you for the tips.

My pleasure.