VAMPIRE MEETINGS AND HOW TO SLAY THEMMeetings can be like mythical vampires – sucking
life out of intelligent and creative people. And sucking funds out of businesses. Unfortunately, there are too many of these meetings in business today.
A UCLA study said “typical” meeting includes nine people. What are dollars associated with this? Suppose average salary of meeting attendees is $40,000. Their hourly pay is about $20.00. Nine people for one hour costs $180.00. Not bad, right?
But consider implications. People don’t spend just one hour a year in meetings. A 3-M survey in 1998 reported people spend between one and 1.5 days per week in meetings. They also said 25% to 50% of those meetings was wasted. Conservatively, say 25% or two hours per week is wasted in meetings...times nine people. 18 hours a week. Times $20.00 an hour. 18 times 20 times 48 weeks = $17,280.00.
This is a conservative number. For only nine people. How many people are in your company? And how much time do they spend in meetings each week? These figures do not include preparation time, fringe benefits, meeting and travel expense or, worst of all, opportunity cost. Really, what could these people have been doing for your business if they weren’t tied up in ineffective meetings week after week?
So, what can we do about these vampire meetings?
First, look at your regularly scheduled meetings. What is objective? Are they really necessary? Can agenda be covered via paper or email? Does everyone have to be there for every meeting?
Once you know this meeting must be held with these people, set a meeting objective. Share it with people before and at start of meeting. Post it on a flipchart. Typical meeting objectives might be: Generate ideas to overcome our funding problem, Gain understanding of our new retirement plan, Get updates on three key projects, etc. The advantage of having a clear objective for your meeting is that people will police themselves and stay on-topic. And if they don’t, you can point to objective and say, “We have 30 minutes left and still have to achieve this goal for this meeting.” Knowing and sharing objective is a wonderful way to manage group’s energy and focus.
Another way to keep your meetings productive and efficient is to manage people dynamics. One of most common energy drains is when one person talks and talks and others never get to say a word. If possible, have a meeting facilitator whose job is, among other things, to make sure everyone gets appropriate airtime. When you do not have luxury of a content-neutral facilitator, then chairperson must manage group. In this situation of one dominant personality, chairperson can enforce brevity for all. Explain that you want everyone to give his or her thoughts in a sentence first and then elaborate on it. So, when that individual starts his/her comments with an unfocused beginning (“20 years ago, I worked at a company and there was this woman named Ann….”), you have permission to step in and say, “Could you give us your point in a sentence first, Paul?” Being even-handed in implementing this approach is vital.
