Many Executives complain about Meetings

1 Mention “meetings and their usefulness” and executives usually indicate that many meetings fail or, at least, waste the time of many Members.

2 Why do meetings so often provoke this feeling of annoyance?

3 While many different specific reasons exist for having meetings, most appear to rate as justifiable. If so, why do Attendees feel annoyed at meetings? These notes attempt to establish the reasons and suggest methods for reducing the problems involved.

Reasons why Meetings waste Time – for (some of) their Members

One Meeting has Many Objectives and not all Members have an Interest in Each Objective.

4 One reason for dissatisfaction occurs because many meetings have many objectives; but all or most Meeting Members attend for the whole meeting i.e. each objective. Often this situation occurs because of the time and expense involved for Members to travel to the Meeting. For some objectives perhaps one third of the Meeting Group do not rate as essential Attendees. Thus, when true, these people feel annoyed because the meeting wastes their time.

Some Members have little or no Interest in Some Topics within the one Objective.

5 Even though interested in a particular objective, different Members have different interest in particular sub-objectives and/or topics within one objective.

Meeting Members have Varying Requirements about how much they want to know about a Topic.

6 Different Members of an Organisation (a) require different information about a topic and/or (b) have different desires to participate in a partic­ular decision.

7 Some Members need detailed knowledge of a particular topic/decision; others simply want a broad appreciation.

8 Even if everyone at a meeting wants to know something about the topic/decision, their actual ‘correct” requirements will vary along a scale from (a) detailed knowledge to (b) an understanding that someone intends to do something about some aspect of the topic/decision.

9 Different people need to know more or less detail because of their work or the role they have in the Organisation. More variation in knowledge requirements occur because of the personality of different Members. Some want more detail about things than others. When another Member introduces a particular point, some have a greater capacity for resisting the desire to question, probe, and consider – as compared to others.

10 For all these reasons – both legitimate from the Organisation’s view­point (however judged) and from the personal-interest viewpoint – Members have different requirements for information.

11 Exactly the same point applies to information regarding a decision. Some people feel very concerned about some decisions – for wise reasons. Others feel that it does not concern them and/or their Section and that they have no right or desire to take part in making a particular decision.

12 Thus, different Members will have different knowledge requirements about just one topic of a meeting.

Attendance Because of Position Held

13 Sometimes Members attend a meeting because they hold a particular position and therefore they (or someone else) feels they should attend. Sometimes such people will find that their presence contributes little to some (or all) topics and some (or all) topics do not help them to function better. Thus they feel annoyed because they need not have attended some or all of the meeting.

The Organisation Structure “Demands” a Group of People Should Attend

14 Sometimes the structure/policies of an Organisation call for a particu­lar group of people to meet together. Sometimes these people have entirely different knowledge on the topics of the meeting.

15 Example. A classic case occurs with the Board of Directors of any company which includes outside and inside Directors. On many meeting topics, inside Directors know in detail something about the particular topic, possibly because they have (a) worked on it themselves and/or (b) discussed it at (internal) Management meet­ings.

16 However the outside Directors will know little or nothing about the topic. Hence the people with the knowledge have to contain themselves while somebody informs the outside people. In addition, they may have to sit through discussions of the very points that someone has already raised and which they have dealt with satisfactorily (at least by their own standards), yet they have to deal with them all over again because the outside Direc­tors have not heard about the situation previously.

17 In structures such as shown in the example above, some Members (with the knowledge) will inevitably get bored (and possibly annoyed) with dis­cussions which they perceive as wasting their time.

Expert(s) attend in Case Someone wants to obtain Information from Them

18 Sometimes Managers want to bring one or more of their experts to a meeting with a group of one or more other Department Heads. Such Subordi­nates/Experts will know a lot about the topic(s) which the meeting aims to discuss and will find the whole matter boring unless a situation occurs where their Managers calls on their expertise.

19 Some Meeting callers have gone to a lot of trouble to get a group of people together and aim to make a decision on a particular matter. Such people do not want to risk a situation where the meeting will not decide ­through an inability to obtain the opinions of one or more “experts” who could have attended.

20 Thus one or more Members go to the meeting but sometimes they may contribute nothing at all to the meeting – it will depend on the reactions and approaches that other Meeting Members take.

Different Views of Leader and Attendees

21 Sometimes Members have a different view regarding their attendance as compared with the person who calls them to the meeting. A Manager will call for particular people to attend and/or some people would feel unhappy if left out. However if the Invitee has a different attitude, then even though the meeting Leader planned carefully who should attend, a dissatis­fied Member will exist. The perverseness of human beings sometimes means that a person will feel annoyed if left out, but also annoyed if included.

Expectancies not Realised

22 Sometimes Members feels annoyed because of an expectancy about a meeting. Members agree to go and/or want to go because they believe a meeting will discuss a particular situation.   But when they arrive they finds the situation well down on the priority list. It may not get dis­cussed or it gets discussed in a superficial way.

23 Sometimes communication problems exist because the interpretation of the subject matter as seen by the Meeting Convenor will differ from the actual meeting discussions. This point often applies in straight informa­tion-giving (lecture) meetings, when the Speaker does not talk on the advertised topic.

Some People Remain at a Meeting “Just in Case”

24 Some Members feel they should remain at a meeting because it might just lead to something which they should note and/or discuss. In any case, the business culture does not encourage people to state: “This topic does not concern me. I will leave the meeting. Please phone me when you move on to the next subject”.

25 If analysed carefully, the above idea provides a logical approach. However Meeting Participants would need a high interest in overall effi­ciency regarding time-usage (and some courage) to try such an approach.

26 In addition, they would need faith in the Meeting’s operations to encourage them to absent themselves and rely on others to call them back at an appropriate time.

Reducing The Problem: Some Meeting Parts Waste The Time Of Some Members

27 Meeting Members should realise and accept that they cannot have an equal interest in all topics discussed at a Meeting. Each Member has some different interests from other Members.

28 Thus if they want to maintain their membership of the Meeting Group they cannot expect to find every part of a meeting equally interesting. Some parts will bore them and they will class them as a waste of time.

29 The traditional approach to meetings infers that each Member should listen to, and discuss, each meeting topic.

30 However, where a Member has no interest in a topic and has nothing to contribute, this tradition makes some Members feel annoyed about the waste­fulness (to them) of some parts of the meeting. Some Members get so an­noyed that they do, and say, things which hinder the meeting’s activities.

Specific Approaches

Adopt a Realistic Attitude

31 To help solve the above dilemma, Members need to accept the above points. They should accept that they will not have an interest in every item.

Instantaneous Transport

32 People need magic devices which allow them to transport themselves in and out of meetings as they wish – depending on the topic under discussion (and the Member speaking).

33 However, even this fanciful machine will not offer a perfect solution. While two Members want to attend a meeting to hear a discussion on a par­ticular topic, one would want a much more detailed discussion than the other.

34 In addition many meetings operate so poorly that Members cannot always anticipate just what topic a meeting will discuss.

Leave the Meeting as Appropriate and do other Work

35 Without a magical transportation device it costs time and money for Members to travel to, and from, a meeting.

36 Thus the time involved in getting to a meeting does not allow/justify people returning to their normal place of work and back to the meeting with economy of time and money.

37 In this case, the next obvious, logical approach would encourage such Participants to leave the meeting and go to a room where they could work effectively. They would need to plan for such a meeting by bringing some appropriate work with them so that they could spend their time usefully.

38 This approach will not prove satisfactory if the Participants do have some interest in the meeting topic (but not a detailed one) and/or do want to monitor the meeting’s operations in case they wish to play a part. In this latter case, such Participants need to have some work of an appropri­ate nature which they can do while at the meeting, but which does not disturb the operations of the meeting from other Meeting Members’ view­points.

Have the Experts “Stand By” and available for Consultation when Necessary

39 Sometimes Experts cannot “stand by” because of the “large” cost of travelling to the meeting. Even so, the logical approach would have the experts travel to the Meeting but bring some many executives complain about meetings

Bring some Interruptible Non-Complicated Work to do in the Meeting

40 If Members could do something which made them feel less bored and less annoyed, but still allowed them to listen to the discussion, Meeting Mem­bers would have a very useful approach. Such an approach should lessen considerably the impatience Members feel about some parts of some Meetings.

41 Members could bring to a Conference something else to do, which they could do and still half listen to the Conference. Such work should need only limited concentration and stopping and starting on it should not seriously affect its successful performance. When the Conference discussed something to which the Member wanted to listed more carefully, they would stop work and take a full-time interest in the conference. When something no longer interested them, they could return to their own individual work.

42 Thus the boring parts of the Conference would no longer annoy them. They would feel satisfied whether they did Conference work or their own work.

43 People already use a similar approach. Some Readers will feel horrified at this suggestion. However, if they think about what people do at meetings, they will realise that many people already do something simi­lar.

44 When Members become bored they want something to do; so they draw diagrams, doodle, fill in the “o’s” in written material, or generally do some other meaningless writing which usually allows them to half-listen to the discussions. These actions fill in time, help reduce boredom, but do not produce anything useful.

45 Will the alternative work distract other Members? One possible problem exists with alternative individual work: Will a Member’s alternative work seriously distract the attention of other Members?

46 Almost anything another Member does can distract one or more other Members.

47 Examples of Distracting Actions. A Member doodles, moves his arms and body, shifts her position, looks at something (which leads someone else to believe he is paying no attention to the Speaker) looks bored or sleepy, smiles at the wrong time or in the wrong way (against a Member, rather than with her), shuffles through papers.

48 The closer the other Member and the more obvious the movement, the greater chance the movement has of distracting other Members.

49 Attitudes will make for, and/or increase, distractions.  Probably, if Members feel another Member should not act in a particular way, such action will prove more likely to (a) reach their attention and (b) distract them.

50 Thus the attitude of Members to this concept of alternative work will help decide if they feel distracted. Sometimes they will become distracted from jealousy over the advantage the other Members have made for them­selves.

51 However, the above idea does suggest that people should choose alterna­tive work which requires little obvious movement and which aims to distract others the least.

52 An alternative: let your mind wander and stop listening. Readers who still feel horrified at this suggestion should remember that no-one can force anyone to pay attention to a discussion. People who feel bored usually let their mind wander elsewhere, so that effectively they do not listen. Thus, thoughts in an individual’s mind will usually prove a great­er cause of distraction than actions by other Members.

Face Reality, try the logical Approach and increase overall Productivity

53 Why not allow bored Members to do something which interests them and encourages them to feel they should half-listen at the same time? The result will prove no different from the viewpoint of the other conference Members, but will mean that a Conference Member feels less bored, acts more productively, and generally the whole Group will produce more. Certainly the group will produce no less than if the Members feel they should play the part of a full Member of a discussion but nevertheless daydream and do not listen.

54 Meeting Members should face up to the reality of the situation and accept that inevitably Members will feel bored and thus take no part in some stages of the Conference. Why not encourage them to become “un-bored” by letting them do something productive? If they can do something produc­tive probably their attitudes to the rest of the Conference will improve.

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