Did you know that unnecessary and unproductive meetings cost big organisations $2.5 million annually- and that’s only if you have 100 employees? If you have five thousand employees, that’s $100 million.
Scary, isn’t it? Some companies like Shopify, Gitlab, Asana, Canva etc., are fighting to avoid that by introducing “no meeting days”, creating a meeting cost calculator, and constantly reviewing their meeting to asses which ones are needed. Sometimes your company might not apply these types of adjustments at scale.
But you can still improve your meeting etiquette to lead by example to your team as a self-aware leader.
Here are three tips you can apply tomorrow to improve your meetings.
- Tip #1: Use meetings as the last option, not the first. Be extremely ruthless when scheduling a meeting and ask the same from your team. Don’t underestimate the collective waste of time. 1-hour meeting with ten people is a 10-hour meeting, not one.
- Tip #2: Reduce meeting length by 30% as a default. We shape our tools, and after that, our tools shape us, as Marshall McLuhan said. Adjust default 30-minute meetings to 20 minutes. Reduce the default 60-minute slot to 40 minutes. Most meetings don’t have to go the entire scheduled time. Force yourself to be concise, stay on topic, and make your sessions shorter.
- Tip #3: Write it up. Instead of discussing a half-baked idea, sharing your thoughts as a write-up is better. Clear writing forces better thought and a better understanding of what’s more important than what and how things are related. When something’s written up, anyone can absorb it on their own time when they have the time. This will also enable asynchronous communication and save a considerable amount of time.
Emre Guney 