The man standing in front of the whiteboard is animated. He’s drawn a day’s schedule on the board and marks each hour with a meeting.
“When do I do my work, though?” an exasperated man in the audience asks, pointing toward the full schedule on the whiteboard.
“Any other time,” says the animated man, as if the answer is obvious. He circles 7 am and 5 pm, insisting the audience member could do his work in either of those slots. “Welcome to corporate America,” the man concludes.
The video, from TikTok, is facetious but relatable. My clients tell me regularly that their schedules are too full to get “the real work” done. Just recently, one named “death by meeting” as a descriptor of the organizational culture.
The high cost of too many meetings
Meetings are often the most effective way to get individuals rowing in the same direction. We need meetings to update one another, debate ideas and make collaborative decisions. And yet, each meeting has a price tag attached, both in real dollar value and in lost productivity.
Here are three ways too many meetings may be costing you and your organization.
Cost #1: Too little time to do the long-term work
The sheer volume of meetings can overwhelm the day, leaving little time for productivity, and even less time for the long-range, strategic, creative work that helps organizations and leaders advance.
Cost #2: Decision inefficiency
When too many people are in a meeting, our work gets less efficient rather than more. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously has a “two pizza” rule — a meeting should never be larger than what can be fed by two pizzas. Organizational psychologist Richard Hackman agrees; he places the optimal number at four to six people.
Why should meetings be smaller? With a smaller group, each person must engage, or it becomes obvious they’ve checked out. On a larger team, “social loafers” can multitask or otherwise disengage. Additionally, smaller teams can consider options and make decisions faster.
Cost #3: Financial overinvestment
“This is costing me a lot,” another leader told a group gathered to address a concern.
He wasn’t wrong; calculate the hourly rate of each meeting attendee’s salary, and the figure can sometimes become eye-popping.
A middle manager with an annual salary of about $100k a year earns roughly $48/hour. Put eight mid-level managers in a meeting, and it will cost about $400 in salary costs alone — and that’s before factoring in the work left undone while too many people sat in a meeting.
Finding the right people for the meeting
To protect people’s time, ensure efficiency and minimize costs, it’s not enough to have a smaller group in the meeting — we need the right group in the meeting.
Here is a rule of thumb to help you evaluate if you are needed in a meeting: in any meeting, you should be representing, leading, learning or leaving. Let’s walk through those:
Representing
If you’re in the meeting to represent, you’re there to bring your perspective, and possibly that of related individuals or teams, to the conversation. Maybe you work for the marketing team, but your boss also oversees customer analytics, and he expects you to represent analytics colleagues as well.
Representatives need to do the work between meetings to keep colleagues who aren’t in the next meeting informed, and to gather their insights so their voices can be brought into the room.
By building dynamic team relationships that enable leaders to represent their colleagues’ work as well as their own, managers can free up time that would otherwise have been lost.
Leading
There are two ways you might have a leadership role in the meeting. First, you might be the convener, responsible for setting the agenda and guiding the team through it. If that’s the case, you are a necessary part of the meeting, and the structure you bring will help make work more efficient while ensuring everyone gets heard.
Or second, you might be the executive sponsoring a project. If that’s the case, you may have someone else lead the meeting, but you’re present to offer leadership by keeping the group on track with higher organizational priorities, with vision and inspiration or with affirmation. This second kind of leading is sometimes ceremonial rather than task-driven, which means you can pick and choose the moments where your leadership presence matters most. When it’s not needed, deputize the meeting leader and free your schedule.
Learning
This is often overlooked — being present in a meeting to learn is an important reason to attend. Maybe your boss is trying to get you broader organizational exposure or preparing you for her PTO next month. Maybe you’ve expressed a desire to understand some process within the organization, and your boss offers a seat at the table for your education. Learning is a legitimate reason to be present in a meeting — soak up the insights.
Leaving
If you aren’t clear on what you’re representing, leading or learning, it’s time to ask: Do I really need to be here? Could another colleague, already in the meeting, represent your perspective as well?
Making a graceful exit
Some organizational cultures make leaving a meeting difficult. This may be because presence at a meeting signals organizational power or value, or because the internal communication mechanisms aren’t in place to allow others to represent your work adequately. Your boss may want you there to pick up the latest news or read the tea leaves.
If you’re staying in the meeting, get the most out of your time there. Make sure the team is designed with goals, roles and protocols in mind, so you don’t do any needless work.
But if you want to exit, here are three steps to do it gracefully:
- Identify a representative – who is going to represent your perspective and keep you looped into the work?
- Announce your departure – express appreciation for your inclusion and make yourself available for dialogue, then announce, “I can be of more use in other ways, so I’m going to step back from the meetings, but [name your representative] will keep me connected.
- Monitor the progress – check in periodically to ensure no balls have been dropped during this transition.
Something has to give
The animated man on the whiteboard was joking about 7 am and 5 pm, but he wasn’t wrong that something had to give. No one is going to give you more hours in the day. The real fix is asking, before you accept the next meeting invite: am I representing, leading or learning — or is it time to leave?
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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