Is there anything worse than going to that meeting and having it be an unproductive one? No one seems to be leading the discussion. We go off on tangents. No decisions are being made, the meeting is running over its scheduled end time, and all I want is to get back to my keyboard so I can hopefully capture what little time is left in my work time.
A commonly held view among developers (and many other people who work in collaborative roles) is that meetings are pointless. And in cases like the above scenario, it’s easy to see why people feel that way.
The truth is that a lot of teams suck at meetings. If they consistently run over time, wander off track, and distract people from doing more valuable work, you’re doing them wrong. Do meetings have to be that way? Are they actually pointless, or can you retrain yourself and your team to have meetings that actually add value to your work?
Why Meetings Might Be The Worst Office Ritual Of All Time
Do we really need to list all the reasons we hate meetings? If your office sucks at meetings, you probably already know all these. But let’s take a look anyway.
1. Meetings Distract People from Meaningful Work
At worst, meetings happen during really productive times for people and take them away from doing their best work. At best, they interrupt whatever the meeting attendees might be working on, and we all know how hard it is to get back onto your train of thought once you’ve been interrupted. No matter what, meetings cause a drop in productivity for everyone who has to attend them.
2. Meetings Don’t Stay On Topic
How many times have you been in a meeting that began with idle chit-chat about everyone’s upcoming weekend or holiday plans? Then, mid-meeting, discussion wanders off-topic again as whenever someone goes on a tangent during discussion. For anyone who just wants to get back to work, this is unbearable.
3. Meetings Include People Who Don’t Need To Be There
When was the last time you were in a meeting with only essential people included? Or the last time you were invited to a meeting that you were essential to? I’m going to guess never. Meeting organizers tend to over-invite, which seems like a good idea in theory, right? More minds working on projects or problems? In actuality, it just draws more people away from productive, meaningful work they could be doing during that time.
4. Meetings Multiply Wasted Time
Say you have to attend a one-hour weekly meeting that generally isn’t super productive. Not a huge deal, since you only lose an hour per week, right?
Wrong.
One hour per week adds up to 52 lost hours per year… for each employee who attends that meeting. So if 10 people generally attend, you’re looking at 520 hours of lost work time per year for the company. And that’s only counting the time actually spent in the meeting. It doesn’t account for time spent prepping, or time spent trying to get back on track after attending a pointless meeting.
5. Meetings Aren’t Work
Sure, meetings are spent talking about work. But that means they aren’t spent doing work. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but most meetings can’t really be counted as work, which is a huge drain on your company’s productivity.
Reasons We Need Meetings Anyway
Unfortunately, despite all the reasons we hate meetings, you can’t usually just eliminate them altogether. There are reasons we need meetings, especially if you can manage to hold productive meetings (more on that later).
1. Meetings Help Us Communicate Better
Studies show that more than 90 percent of all communication is nonverbal — think body language and tone of voice. That means meetings can be an opportunity for way better communication than you’ll ever get over email or Slack messages.
Better communication means fewer misunderstandings and less conflict. It can help strengthen your team and promote collaboration. Meetings can also be a great place to resolve issues, since face-to-face communication leaves less room for misinterpretation and promotes back-and-forth conversation better than technological communication.
And meetings are a great place for sharing information, brainstorming, and educating other members of the team more effectively than you could by just communicating without the face-to-face factor. Being able to have an instant flow to communication (which you just can’t get over email, sorry not sorry) allows members of your team to work off each other’s ideas and feedback quickly and naturally, which can lead to better creativity and collaborative problem-solving.
2. Meetings Help Us Make Decisions
Have you ever tried to facilitate a group decision over Slack?
Here’s how that usually goes.
You run a poll.
Several people comment with new ideas instead of choosing one of the poll options, so you run another poll.
80 percent of the team participates, and you have to hunt down the others to get them to vote.
Two poll options have tied, so you have to have another discussion and run another poll. The whole process takes several days and leaves people frustrated at the slow decision-making and the inability to share their own ideas.
That’s why meetings are so vital to making decisions. Being able to set a time to have a group discussion in a face-to-face setting makes it so everyone can have their voices and input heard, and the group can truly collaborate on coming to a decision.
3. Meetings Keep Projects On Track
When you start a large project, the best way to kick it off is by having a meeting where you can delegate tasks and assign out responsibilities to different people on the team. And as that project progresses, meetings can help keep it on track by allowing the whole team to check in, share their progress, alert the team to any setbacks or challenges, and work together to keep everything moving forward. When a project requires a lot of moving pieces, meetings are truly the most efficient way to keep track of them all.
4. Meetings Provide an Open Forum for Organizations
In any organization, it can be hard to find space to air out your frustrations, grievances, and complaints. Meetings provide an opportunity to do that. They also give space for complimenting other team members, providing constructive feedback, refocusing and reflecting on projects and tasks, and other types of communication that an open forum helps facilitate.
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