Spend 40% Less Time in Meetings--And Get A Life Instead
It's time to get your unruly
schedule under control--so you can spend your time where you want to spend it.
Six months ago, Gregg Renfrew found
herself in a common predicament. This serial entrepreneur, who sold The Wedding
List to Martha Stewart in 2001, and recently started a natural beauty products
company called Beautycounter,
was booked in back to back meetings from 8:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. every day.
This wasn't working for her life or her business strategy: "If you're
sitting in meetings all the time, you're not executing," she says.
"You're talking."
So she went on a tear to get her schedule
under control, and estimates that her total meeting volume has now dropped by
40%. Indeed, she informed me that after we got off the phone, she had the hours
of 3 to 6:30 p.m. completely open. How can you do the same?
First, look at root causes:
If you're in charge, try to create a
culture where formal meetings aren't required to discuss things. "Spend
less time scheduling meetings, and more one on one time talking to team
members," Renfrew says. "You can get the same amount of information
in a five-minute desk-side conversation. It doesn't have to be a meeting."
Got people working from home or in other locations? "Email is your friend.
A lot of that can be solved by email." Or a quick phone call, or IM. A key
insight: You don't have to schedule a phone call to make one. If nothing else,
don't send a lot of calendar invites. Formalizing everything creates an overly
scheduled culture.
Another reason companies wind up
with large and frequent meetings is that people assume their career advancement
depends on talking with and being seen by their managers. Saying hello, asking
people to come with you to grab a cup of coffee, and generally being accessible
can solve this problem with less time overhead.
The biggest reason calendars get
clogged with meetings is that everyone wants input because "they're so
petrified of making bad decisions," Renfrew says. She made it clear that
she did not need to sit in a meeting to discuss the viscosity of a skin
cream--she's hired a great make-up artist, and "that's her job." Of
course, part of letting go is that you have to be okay with some screw-ups.
"If you can't allow people to make mistakes, if you're not comfortable
with that as an organization, then you'll be wasting all your time in
meetings."
Then look at the meetings
themselves:
If nothing will change in the world
as the result of a meeting, there's no real point in having one. Park
interesting discussions for later--this isn't your college English class--and
have someone who would have enjoyed being a meter maid in a different life keep
you all on task. Look at it this way: meetings are expensive. Six people in the
room costing you $50/hour is $300 for a standard meeting. You could buy the
whole office lunch for that--an opportunity cost of a lot of good will.
The only reason all meetings take 30
minutes or 60 minutes is that's how your calendar is structured. Try scheduling
meetings for other quantities of time: 20 minutes, 45 minutes. If you give
things less time, they often take less time.
Unfortunately, office meetings
sometimes take on the dynamic of getting to sit at the cool kids table in the
cafeteria. Nip that in the bud. Tell people they're not coming--"not
because you're not important, not because you're not on the team, but because
I'd rather you spend your time doing X, and this is Y." In other words,
your team members are too valuable to waste their time in the conference room
discussing tangential matters. "If you eradicate that fear in people,
they're happy to sit quietly at their desks and do their work," Renfrew
says.
By Laura Vanderkam
http://www.fastcompany.com/3021453/spend-40-less-time-in-meetings-and-get-a-life-instead?partner=newsletter
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