Many work meetings are a waste of time. How do we fix that? | Issue #1
The first ever Leadership Bulletin looks at work meetings and asks: are they worth the time they take? If not, how do we fix it?
Hello and welcome to the first ever Leadership Bulletin.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be experimenting with different features for this newsletter. Issue 1 includes a reason to be cheerful, a feature on work meetings, one thing to try this week and my current reading recommendations. Your feedback is always welcome - just hit reply to this email.
Let’s begin.
A REASON TO BE CHEERFUL.
It’s been a pretty miserable two years since the word “Coronavirus” first appeared on our lips. But now, Professor David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has said that “the U.K is the closest to any country in being out of the pandemic.” With cases, deaths and hospitalisations all falling week-on-week, dare we dream that 2022 is the year we finally move on from the horrors of Coronavirus? If it is, that’s one heck of a reason to be cheerful…
IN FOCUS: WORK MEETINGS.
Work meetings often feel important. They are an opportunity to showcase what we have done, hold others to account, and be held accountable ourselves. They feel like work - and important work, at that. But when did you last ask yourself: are our team meetings actually productive?
In too many organisations, meetings lack structure, over-run, or are simply a regurgitation of what happens every week. Such meetings waste time and sacrifice vital productivity. But how can we have better meetings? Here are three things to try:
Give meetings a clear goal - or cancel them.
When the pandemic struck, lots of meetings were created with the “repeat every…” button ticked. This made sense - it was a way for people to keep in touch when we were working from home, often for the first time. But now that working patterns are beginning to stabilise, it’s time to go through all of the meetings in your team’s calendar and ask “why do we have this meeting? Does it have a clear goal?” If not, the meeting may have outlived its usefulness.
Ask people to bring solutions, not problems.
Meetings can be a great way to collectively problem solve. After all, many minds are usually better than one! But there is much less value in a meeting when your colleagues turn up and hear about challenges for the first time. I recommend always sending out an agenda at least 24 hours before a meeting which includes a list of questions people should consider and be prepared to speak on. This will help your team bring solutions, not just problems, to meetings.
Schedule your meetings right.
A healthy working pattern makes time for different activities: individual work, responding to emails, meeting colleagues, etc. The most productive working days put these activities in the right order to reflect their importance and when we’re working at our best. When should meetings fit in? A lot of research suggests that afternoons are when employees’ energy begins to fall and it becomes harder to focus on intensive, individual tasks. Try scheduling your meetings for the afternoon, rather than the morning, and use them to re-energise your team for the remainder of the working day.
ONE THING TO TRY THIS WEEK.
Try tipping generously when you receive great customer service. It will not only be good for your server - and likely incentivise better service - but it’s also good for you. Research has shown that when tipping is done generously but freely, it has benefits for your wellbeing and makes you perceive yourself as a more compassionate contributor to society. [Source: Association for Psychological Science]
WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK.
Last week, When by Daniel H. Pink finally made it to the top of my reading pile. It’s a short and highly practical guide to understanding “chronobiology” - in other words, how our bodies understand time and what it means for how we perform. The best insights are contained in short sections called ‘The Time Hacker’s Handbook’. It won’t all work for you, but I’m willing to bet at least one of the recommendations will positively impact your working day.
When is available via Amazon and Blackwells, and plenty of other bookshops.
IF YOU ONLY READ ONE THING THIS WEEK…
Make it this: 'Design an Office that People Want to Come Back to' by Andrea Vanecko, Jonathan Ward, and Robert Mankin, as featured on the Harvard Business Review website.
If 2022 is the year we finally begin to move on from COVID, organisations will have to determine new working patterns, including when people work at home and when they come in to the office. Working from home has its benefits, but so does the office, so how do you make the office somewhere people want to be? Reading this article is a start.
1 Feb 2022