Why Replace Meetings?
October 17, 2009
Inc Magazine, in a survey of middle managers, found that on an average week those managers spent more than 17 hours in meetings. The poll was a horror story! In 34% of the cases, the meetings had no agenda; 38% never addressed all the agenda items if they had an agenda; 41% ended with no follow-up action assigned; 54% involved non-essential personnel; 64% had no time frames set around them; the vast majority had no “thinking questions” set up to help focus the discussion.
Do some math around that survey. Based on six people in a company, each making $20 an hour, spending 17 hours a week, 49 weeks a year, a company would invest $99,600 in a base salary in meetings alone.
Unfortunately when companies are feeling the economic pinch they usually add to the number of meetings and further reduce the very things that inspire employees’ innovations. If supervisors can step out of time for a moment and look at new ways to communicate and interact with their employees huge benefits can begin to happen.
The great news is that change can happen one supervisor at at time, it does not have to be company wide or from the top down. By getting the company clutter out of the way and creating meaningful ways for people to come together to solve problems, supervisors and have an incredible impact.
