Cancel that Meeting!

Cancel that Meeting! February 10, 2016

ID-10046983Meetings.  They are the mainstay of the modern workplace, both in and outside of the church.

But how much do they accomplish and are they worth the opportunity cost in time and talent?

After all, our places of employment pay for us to set aside other tasks in order to attend them and they often generate other kinds of work that take us further off task.

After years of convening and attending them, I’ve come to the conclusion that we often meet for all of the wrong reasons.

One of the wrong reasons for meeting is habit and the inertia that it breeds. 

To be sure, it appears to make sense to reserve space for leadership teams to meet on a regular basis.  For that reason, the beginning of almost every year of work begins with setting aside significant time for meetings; and many of those happen, with or without a good reason for having them.

But in most organizations, the strategic issues that need to be weighed are scattered unevenly across a year’s work.  It is often only habit and the inertia that it breeds that keep the meetings coming.

One look at the agenda can tell us whether the meetings we have scheduled are truly valuable: Are there critical decisions to be made that go beyond polling our teams?  Are there strategic considerations at stake?  Are there variables that need to be weighed in making the decisions on the agenda?

If not, there may not be a good reason for the meeting you are about to convene.

A second “wrong reason” for meeting is to achieve a sense of connection.

Leaders live with one kind of isolation or another from the people with whom they work.  Travel, conversations with outside stakeholders, and the routine that dominates all of our lives can undermine the sense of connection that we have with our teams.

But meeting is a counter-productive means of addressing that need.  Meetings do not necessarily nurture conversation or esprit de corps.  Gathering to achieve connection also overlooks the ways in which we are remotely connected with one another on a regular basis or can be.

Rather than meet, we should take advantage of modern modes of communication and, when that all important, face-to-face connection is important, there are more open, conversational alternatives.

A third “wrong reason” for meeting is head counting.

In a world without virtual conversations and email, perhaps there was a reason for counting heads and tracking progress.  But in a wired world, that reason for meeting no longer makes sense.

The changes that have taken place in communication not only make it possible to “check in” in new and more efficient ways.  They also have created a world in which people can and do work longer hours.

It is worth asking whether even that all-important dimension of meeting is an artifact of the past.

So are there reasons to meet?  Yes, but only when we can answer four questions in the affirmative and in ways that are concrete and specific:

  • Is the agenda for this meeting strategic in nature?
  • Will this meeting make use of my team’s creativity and expertise and does it invite them to contribute?
  • Does the agenda merit their time and attention, as well as the cost to our organization?
  • Will the meeting draw on the strengths of those in attendance in a collaborative effort that cannot be accomplished in any other way?

If the answers to those questions are “no,” we might be gathering out of habit, to achieve a sense of connection, or to count heads.

And, if we are, its time to cancel that meeting.

 

Photo by Ambro, used with permission from freedigitalphotos.net

 


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