Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

THE meeting spills over into its second hour. We are discussing an employee productivity initiative. At the moment, our most talkative committee member is describing a similar effort at another company. Her descriptions are peppered with self-consciously clever turns of phrase and images.

Another participant chimes in with the idea that we need some kind of incentive system to reward employees for behaviors we want from them. This is the same solution he offers for every problem, at every meeting.

Then, our self-appointed parliamentarian interjects a long story about a previous institutional effort — to make the point that our team is not the proper entity to recommend the kinds of changes we are proposing.
I, meanwhile, contribute nothing useful.

Finally, the woman who set the meeting calls it quits and tells us we’ll continue the discussion next week. We drift back to our offices wondering what went wrong and how to make up for the wasted time.

This meeting occurred many years ago, but others that are distressingly similar happen at companies everywhere, every day.

Part of the problem at such meetings is that the leader has not set clear objectives or an agenda, and didn’t assign pre-meeting preparation tasks. Instead, the leader seems to hope that magic will occur, producing a serendipitous solution to some of the problems addressed. Of course, that doesn’t happen. As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels.

This doesn’t mean we should always avoid face-to-face meetings — but it is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones.
The main reason we don’t make meetings more productive is that we don’t value our time properly. The people who call meetings and those who attend them are not thinking about time as their most valuable resource.

In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don’t apply easily to time.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.

Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.

And, once meetings are over, we don’t effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this “diffusion of responsibility” and one consequence is that no one thinks it’s his or her job to fix it the next time.

I USED to be the disengaged participant — one who had good ideas about how to solve a problem or conduct a meeting, but didn’t contribute. I now take a more active role, aiming to make meetings more effective. Here are simple principles I use.

Whoever calls a meeting should be explicit about its objectives. This means specifying tangible goals and assigning responsibility for creating, summarizing and reporting on them. Ask yourself this question: Specifically, what do we want accomplished when we walk out of the room?

Everyone should think carefully about the opportunity costs of a meeting: How many participants are really needed? (Almost all business teams and committees are too big.) How long should the meeting last? Set a definite ending time. Anyone who doubts that the meeting is necessary, or thinks it’s too long, should speak up.
After productive or unproductive meetings, assign credit or blame to the person in charge. Then, if people have track records of leading ineffective meetings, don’t let them lead future sessions. When their expertise is essential, make them subordinate to an effective meeting leader.

Yes, I know that some benefits of meetings aren’t obvious if we look only at tangible progress toward organizational objectives. The person who called the meeting described above was probably interested in more than just finding definite solutions to problems she posed for discussion. She was interested in what solutions the group could generate at first, and maybe wanted to float some of her own half-baked solutions for initial evaluation before thinking harder.

Even if problem-solving is the objective, meetings can also serve other functions: sometimes, they can communicate a pre-ordained solution, make sure that there are no fatal flaws in it and give those who are unhappy with it a chance to voice their dissatisfaction.

And many meetings serve a cultural function, allowing participants to renew social connections, establish relationships, verify the social order and deepen a sense of belonging. So, it’s possible to justify a few of those too-long and apparently unproductive meetings by finding hidden payoffs.

But, please, don’t just call a meeting and hope the magic happens. Take charge and take personal responsibility for meeting its objectives, whatever they are.
Reid Hastie is Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. E-mail:
preoccupations@nytimes.com.