
"1913 - Trying out the new assembly line" by an unknown photographer, Detroit, Michigan, 1913. Assembly lines can provide efficiencies no other mode of production can match. But the efficiencies come at a price. One component of that price is that the lines need a steady stream of parts, delivered on time. On March 17, 2011, General Motors announced that it would idle the assembly plant in Shreveport, Louisiana, because of a shortage of parts from Japan, which had experienced a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11. Coordination is essential to assembly line efficiency.
So it is with meetings. We conduct meetings because we need an efficient means of collaborating and exchanging information. If attendees can't attend, or can't arrive on time, that efficiency is compromised.
Photo courtesy U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
So far in our exploration of meeting costs, we've examined setup costs and preparation costs — activities driven mostly by the meeting organizer, the scribe, or others with formal roles supporting or leading the meeting. Let's now look at how meeting participants spend time.
- Waiting for people who are late
- During the meeting, we sometimes delay the start until everyone, or at least some important folks, arrive. The cost, though, isn't just the time spent sitting around. The cost often appears in the form of lower quality output that results from rushing other parts of the meeting to make up the lost time, or from deferring some agenda items to the next meeting.
- Tolerating lateness is an expensive habit. If you often wait for late arrivals, schedule time for it and hold it in reserve until you need it. Making this time visible is a first step toward controlling it.
- Preparing reports
- In most meetings, some people deliver reports about some things. They must prepare what to say, perhaps making a short handout or presentation. If they have some not-so-good news, they prepare answers to questions. Some even spend time preparing what not to say, or how to spin their reports to seem less bad than they are.
- All this takes time. Ask for reports only when they're really needed.
- Preparing nasty political attacks and defenses against them
- Probably your organization's accounting system doesn't track time invested in nasty political attacks or preparing defenses against them. Time gets spent on these activities anyway. That time must be charged to something else.
- The more toxic the conflict among the meeting attendees, the more time and money is spent on this activity, even if the conflict is covert. Letting ongoing toxic conflict fester is expensive. Deal with it.
- Preparing presentations
- Some people are scheduled to present more formally, with a longer time slot — 20 minutes or more. They prepare slides and handouts, they rehearse, they gather auxiliary material, and so on.
- Too often, The more toxic the conflict
among the meeting attendees,
the more time and money is
spent on this activity, even if
the conflict is covertmuch of what's presented is unnecessary. Trim these presentations. Nobody ever changes their minds about anything after the first 20 minutes of a presentation. Ask for the express version. - Reporting on action items
- During the meeting, when we assign action items, we record them for tracking purposes. Fine. But in subsequent meetings, we tend to ask for status too early or too often. Some do this to encourage progress.
- If you don't expect significant progress on a particular action item, don't ask for a status report. If you want to encourage progress, find a cheaper way — a private conversation, for example.
What can you do to reduce these costs? Take that as an action item. I don't need a report. First issue in this series
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
FedEx, Flocks, and Frames of Reference
- Your point of view — or reference frame — affects what you see, and how you experience the
world around you. By choosing a reference frame consciously, you can see things differently, and open
a universe of new choices.
Virtual Blowhards
- Controlling meeting blowhards is difficult enough in face-to-face meetings, but virtual meetings present
next-level problems, because techniques that work face-to-face are unavailable. Here are eight tactics
for dealing with virtual blowhards.
A Pain Scale for Meetings
- Most meetings could be shorter, less frequent, and more productive than they are. Part of the problem
is that we don't realize how much we do to get in our own way. If we track the incidents of dysfunctional
activity, we can use the data to spot trends and take corrective action.
Pre-Decision Discussions: Reasoning
- When we meet to resolve issues related to upcoming decisions, we sometimes rely on reasoning to help
find solutions. Contributions to these discussions generally use mixtures of deductive, inductive, and
abductive reasoning. How do they differ, and what are their strengths and risks?
Disagreements in Virtual Meetings
- Disagreements about substance can sometimes become unpleasant. And it seems that the likelihood of this
happening is greater in virtual meetings. Six tactics can help keep things calm enough for groups to
work better together.
See also Effective Meetings and Effective Meetings for more related articles.
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