Productivity Hacks: Most Meetings Only Benefit Leaders

When I look at my calendar and see another day with 10 meetings, I have to wonder: why?

As I look at each meeting, they seem important and like something I need or must attend. New business prospects, departmental bi-weekly meetings to update the team, and business development relationships make up the lion’s share of these meetings in a given week.

The internal meetings feel necessary particularly as I travel and want my people to feel that we have time carved out to address issues that come up in the day to day. I want to follow up and make sure we are delivering for customers and this is amplified by the fact we have two people that are new to the team. BUT when I think about these meetings, I wonder if my people are getting real value out of them.

I’m realizing that these meetings are updates for me and a chance to give feedback on general performance and trouble shoot instead of adding real, long term value that continues to make my people more self-sufficient.

How do you break the cycle and make meetings that are more productive or choose a different form of feedback to take place? It has dawned on me over the last two weeks that meetings that are for one persons benefit….probably shouldn’t happen. Here’s my plan for killing, changing, and keeping meetings moving forward:

1. Meetings to be killed

• Meetings where others don’t have questions unless they’re troubleshooting in nature
• Meetings that take place because people aren’t utilizing internal systems properly and information could be found there
• Business development meetings where the potential value is not crystal clear
• Vendor meetings: I have people that are responsible for their given departments and they should handle the tools and resources needed as the primary contact

2. Change

• New prospect meetings: these should be better qualified with additional screening
• Meetings to discuss topics that could be sent out ahead of time: the meetings where we review in the meeting vs. before and then just discuss outcomes in the meeting

3. Keep

• Weekly team meetings to ensure alignment and that everyone is focused on the vision
• Bi-weekly interdepartmental 10 minute scrums: quick checkins to ensure each department is clearly focused for the week and month
• Monthly 1-1 goals meetings to make sure we are moving forward on individual goals
• Client meetings to update clients on given projects and performance

My goal for this week and next is leave at least 2 hours of free time each day to tackle strategic projects. To do this I’ll have to delete approximately 1 meeting per day that I would have normally handled myself, and instead outsource to the appropriate team member.

What are your time hacks for meetings? The goal is to make all meetings more productive by doing more individually.