DRIVING PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH BETTER MEETING BEHAVIOURS

Ask any executive about their diary and they will likely tell you about how much time they spend in wasteful meetings. 

 Concern about meetings is nothing new. After leading a chaotic local church meeting in the 1860s, US Army Engineer Henry Robert wrote a book on good meeting practice. Robert’s Rules of Order was first published in 1876, the same year Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone. The most recent edition - the 12th -  was published in 2020, almost 100 years after Robert’s death. 

 Robert’s book is not an exciting read. But its longevity emphasises the importance of good meeting practice. Our desire for ordered, productive meetings endures, even as society, technology and, judging from Robert’s photos, hairstyles, have all changed.

 Leap into the 21st century and the quality, and increasingly the volume, of meetings remains a problem. Studies point to a massive increase in meeting loads for executives over the past 50 years. One US study records a 130 per cent increase in the time 21st century executives spend in meetings compared to their chain-smoking Mad Men counterparts of the 1960s.

 With the average executive now spending 23 hours a week in meetings, you would hope this time is being used productively. Sadly, the evidence suggests otherwise. Steven Rogelberg estimates that up to 35 per cent of meeting time is unproductive – an astounding 8 hours of wasted time each week for your average executive.

 The problem lies, it seems, largely with other people’s meetings. Most executives consider the meetings they initiate to be important and well conducted. Other people’s meetings, on the other hand….

 When surveyed, 79% of US managers said their own meetings were very productive but only 56% said the same about meetings initiated by others. This dissonance – my meetings are organisational time well spent, yours are not - can be a sign of unclear corporate priorities, siloes, and a culture of selfishness. It suggests a breach of the golden rule – treat the meetings of others as you would expect them to treat yours.

The picture revealed by the US data rings true of Australia. The numbers and nuances might be different, but the basic story is the same.

 A simplistic response would be to call for fewer meetings. Thang Tran estimates that companies can spend 300 000 hours a year supporting and conducting a single weekly meeting. Imagine what could be done with that time.

 It is doubtless true that some meetings could disappear entirely without being missed. But this ignores the value good meetings create. As Kathryn Heath and Brenda Wensil put it – meetings matter and are the place where culture forms, grows and takes hold.

 Antony Jay, co-author of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, was no natural fan of meetings. Jay, who moonlighted as a management expert, thought most committees to be little more than memorials to dead problems. But even he argued that “the world of human reality…is held together by face to face meetings”.

 Jay’s emphasis on people is important. Meetings are about unlocking the potential of people working collectively. Process rules have a place where they help this. But the main game is designing and conducting meetings for people.

 Meeting practice, like much of life, has received a disruptive jolt from COVID-19. Virtual meetings, once a novelty, have quickly become the norm.

 Virtual meetings have been a mixed blessing. ‘Dead’ time travelling to and from meetings (and work) reduced dramatically. Interactive meeting spaces have flattened hierarchies and unlocked contributions from the normally silent. But this has come at the cost of less human contact, relationship building and, on occasion, meeting substance.

 There is no doubt that virtual meetings will play an important role into the future. But after two years of pandemic-induced stardom, their novelty has worn off, leaving a simple truth –even in cyberspace, a meeting is still a meeting.

 The productive and cultural gains from better meeting practice are diffuse and hard to measure, but that does not make them less real. Good meetings might not be as important as the quality of soup was to the marching of Napoleon’s army, but they are important and room for improvement exists.

 One challenge is that meetings come in all shapes and sizes. Approaches which work well for some, do not for others. One size fits all rules need to be treated with caution. Generally, organisations need better meeting behaviours, not more rules. Here are five.

 Behaviour One: Good convening practice

Good meetings begin with good convening behaviour.

The right to call a meeting is usually and appropriately delegated widely in any organisation. This right is, however, easily abused. Selfish meetings – those called and conducted for the benefit of the convenor without regard for the needs and costs imposed on others – destroy organisational harmony and efficiency.

Good convening behaviour is particularly important for internal meetings. Participants in internal meetings are asked to act generously in supporting outcomes that are the responsibility of others. In return, they have a right to expect that their time is being appropriately valued and that the meeting is a priority for the organisation as a whole. This duty falls to meeting convenors, who must ensure that the collective value of the meeting outweighs all of its costs – not just those they experience directly.

Good convening behaviour, when reinforced, helps create a virtuous circle. Those who convene one meeting are almost always participants in many others. Having confidence that their time is being valued as a participant makes it more likely they will reciprocate when a convenor. Organisational leadership can help by setting and enforcing clear expectations for both convenors and participants.

 Antony Jay also suggests convenors start by asking – what would happen if this meeting did not take place? It is a great question that is not asked often enough.

Behaviour two:  Establish a clear purpose

Thinkers about meeting practice differ on many things, but strongly align on one – meetings need to have a clear purpose that is shared and pursued by all participants.

Focussing on purpose does not mean residualizing the meeting into a set of transactional outcomes. Every meeting contributes to the culture of an organisation. Good meetings achieve their transactional purpose at the same time as creating stronger relationships and organisational capability.

Much flows from the definition of purpose: who should attend, how much time might be needed, what environment should be created and the follow-up which might be required. Selecting who attends is particularly important. Priya Parker  - author of The Art of Gathering - argues that purpose should be your bouncer. Antony Jay, the old softy, says that leaving people out should be done with tact, but needs to be done.

In pursuit of purpose, Jay sees a properly drawn agenda as critical. He argues for meaning rather than brevity, and that the meeting agenda should make the expectations for the meeting and the purpose for each item clear for all participants. It is sound advice.

Behaviour three: Prepare for success.

Busy executives have almost all turned to their assistant at some point and asked - what is my next meeting and why am I going? As understandable as this might be when faced with days of back to back meetings, it is a productivity disaster.

Priya Parker, while talking of gatherings more broadly, argues that events start the moment an invitation is received. Her advice is that 90 percent of what makes a gathering successful is put in place beforehand. This advice applies equally to meetings.

Preparation is not a simple matter of logistics. Nor is it about pre-cooking an outcome. Rather, it is about readying people to participate and pursue the meeting’s purpose.

Focussing on participants and their needs brings important sharpness to preparation. Done well, it avoids making unreasonable asks of participants and unlocks value. As Parker observes, good preparation brings people into the meeting. Poor preparation, on the other hand, leaves them outside the door.

Behaviour four:  Chair and participate with generosity and purpose

Good preparation creates the potential for meeting success. Good chairing and participation are needed to deliver on that potential.

Every participant has a duty to make the meeting successful. But the chair has a special responsibility for ensuring that the purpose of the meeting is achieved.

Antony Jay sees self indulgence by chairs as the biggest barrier to meeting success. He identifies three types of bad chair.  First are those who seek to dominate and impose their will. Second, are those for whom collective activity is enough, irrespective of what it achieves. The third triumph in non-action and kicking cans down the road.

A key role for the chair involves drawing out and engaging with the views of participants. This is harder than it sounds. Priya Parker talks about the need to activate and heighten diversity while protecting, equalising and connecting participants. Kathryn Heath and Brenda Wensil remind us that women are often uncomfortable speaking up and more likely to be spoken over in meetings.

Meeting harmony must also be balanced with what Parker calls controversy. Controversy involves wrestling with contending views and issues in a way that improves the robustness and value of the meeting. Good meetings harness controversy to confront issues rather than duck them.

A final challenge for a chair is to strike the right balance between advocating for a particular outcome within the meeting and facilitating the meeting. There is nothing wrong with a chair having an opinion, even a decisive one, but those who let advocacy overtake facilitation quickly become Antony Jay’s first type of bad chair.

Where this is a likely problem, Jay suggests appointing an independent chair/facilitator. This is wise advice.

Behaviour five: Create meaningful follow-up

Meetings have a beginning and end. But for most meetings, fully achieving purpose relies on influencing actions taken well after the meeting by people who were not present.

Good preparation creates meeting potential, good chairing and participating delivers a good meeting, but good follow-up determines whether the meeting has value beyond its close.

General (which he became in 1901) Robert emphasised the importance of good minutes. This helps, but is rarely enough. Meeting outcomes are often nuanced and require context to understand. Post-meeting follow-up needs to ensure that these nuances flow out of the meeting effectively. Failure to do so, can turn a good meeting into a bad outcome.

Before closing a meeting, chairs and participants should ask – have we established the conditions needed to ensure the value of our meeting flows into the future? If not, there is work still to be done. If so, well done, meeting closed.

Sean Innis is Principal of Damala St Consulting. He is a Fellow of the Australian Studies Institute, ANU and Senior Fellow at ADC Forum.