When did you last walk out of a useless meeting? Never, right?
When did you last participate in a meeting where you got no benefit and contributed nothing? Last week, right?
We were slowly learning from trailblazers like Elon Musk to cut down on meetings. Then the pandemic and the associated video meetings teleported us back to the stone age of meetings. We have more meetings than ever, they start late and drag on, and involve too many people. Analyzing the video of online meetings shows that 50% of participants show up late, 40% have low engagement and 24% of participants don’t say a word during the entire meeting.
When something becomes easier, people do more of it. It takes a conscious effort to get back to focused meetings without clear agendas and only the absolutely necessary participants. Are you tracking how many meetings you have in your organization? If you aren’t, you can be sure you have too many.
(image: Kit-Kat ad mockup by Sam Hennig, creative strategist at Something Big)