“You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question.” —Bill Gates
This quote perfectly summarizes all my frustrations about meetings. Many studies have highlighted the inefficiency of meetings at work. Still, meetings keep increasing in length and frequency, to the point where executives spend around 23 hours a week in them (it was less than 10 hours in the 1960s). It would not be a bad thing if meetings were all useful, but we all know how inefficient most of them are. I’ve been experimenting a lot with meetings in my company and have learned how to make the most out of them—here’s what I’ve discovered and want to share with you so you can use your time well and hold productive, effective meetings.
We usually work on two different schedules: the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule.
This concept was first described by Y Combinator's founder, Paul Graham, in his 2009 essay. In this essay, Graham explains how makers are task-oriented and need a long stretch of time to focus (programmers or writers are typical examples). On the other hand, managers use mainly communication and meetings to make things progress. What’s interesting is that most of the time, we all need to combine the two schedules in our work life.
When you are in the maker’s schedule, a single meeting interruption could be a hard hit on your productivity. The maker’s schedule is most efficient when you are able to enter the flow, a state of deep focus where your concentration is at its maximum and time seems to flow by without you noticing it. Going back to the flow after an interruption can cost you up to 23 minutes! Trying to mix your maker’s and manager’s schedule is always an indicator of inefficiency.
The problem can also come from outside. Managers are more likely to disrupt the maker’s schedule due to the nature of their position. Because of hierarchy, managers also have the power to decide when meetings should happen. This power comes with great responsibility (Spiderman quote alert).
Interrupting the maker's schedule with a meeting is a big waste of their time. A good manager should recognize this and adopt meeting practices that let makers maximize their time. Managers should also realize that they could have fewer meetings and create more maker’s time for themselves.
Paul Graham—a highly solicited person—keeps only the last hours of his day dedicated to meetings. The rest of the day is dedicated to getting things done. In modern companies, most of us need to adopt a dual schedule. So, how do you implement this in your daily work life?
In his bestseller, High Output Management, Andy Grove (former chairman and CEO of Intel) describes two kinds of meetings: process-oriented and mission-oriented meetings. To make the most of your meetings, it’s important to recognize in which type of meeting you are.
Process-oriented meetings aim at sharing knowledge and exchanging information. They usually take place on a regular basis. Classical examples of process-oriented meetings are one-on-one meetings, staff meetings, or project reviews.
Most process-oriented meetings can be avoided (I will exclude the one-on-one from this affirmation). Take staff meetings, for example. It’s very common for companies to organize regular staff meetings to exchange statuses or project updates. The underlying goal is often to gain a bigger picture of how tasks are advancing in a team or company. It’s quite common nowadays to have daily standup meetings at the beginning of the day. The problem with these meetings is that most of the time, they’re an interruption for makers. Even if organized early, the meeting will always disrupt someone’s plan. And when you take this interruption company-wide, the loss of efficiency is very high.
In general, process-oriented meetings can be replaced by digital updates. A written update has more value than one shared in a meeting. It can be read at any time, removes micromanagement, and builds trust across the company.
Take daily or weekly updates, for instance. Apps like Basecamp or Range.co include features dedicated to eradicating daily status meetings. Every day, these tools invite your staff to enter an update. They can choose when to write it and avoid being interrupted by a meeting when they are in their maker’s schedule. The updates are shared with colleagues so they can also read them whenever they want, without being interrupted in the middle of a task. These systems keep all the benefits of a meeting while avoiding the drawbacks.
Process-oriented meetings are not all bad, though. I mentioned the one-on-one as an exception because the main benefit of those meetings is the personal relationship they create between managers and team members. You can of course make the one-on-one more efficient with some techniques I will describe below, but trying to avoid the social interactions of these meetings would be an overkill.
Mission-oriented meetings aim at solving a specific problem or producing a decision. Unlike process-oriented meetings, they are usually ad hoc and can’t be predicted in advance.
The inefficiency of mission-oriented meetings comes from the fact that spontaneous decision-making involves many cognitive biases. The bandwagon bias, for example, stipulates that when we’re in groups, we start to think the same as other people in the group. Another one, the confirmation bias, is very likely to happen in meetings and shows that we are more likely to listen to information that confirms our preconceptions.
The best way to remove cognitive biases from mission-oriented meetings is to go through a long preparation phase in written form. When a manager organizes a mission-oriented meeting, it’s better to not rush into it and to take the time to collect arguments, feedback, or questions beforehand. Creating a written discussion around the problem to solve it could lead to a better decision process. Rushing into a meeting as soon as a problem occurs is the best way to trigger cognitive biases. It also creates false urgency and disrupts other people’s schedules.
Once all parties are well informed through preliminary documentation, a short mission-oriented meeting can happen and conclude the decision process. This is a good way to make sure that all parties agree to the decision, or at least commit to it. It could also be helpful to organize this type of meeting in case of conflicts or escalation in the decision process.
Recognizing which type of meeting you are in will help you understand how to implement a better practice. In the case of process-oriented meetings, try replacing them with digital updates. For mission-oriented meetings, diligent documentation prepared in advance will help reduce the bias linked to decision-making.
Some meetings can’t be avoided. When this is the case, meetings should always follow the seven rules below:
Using this set of rules across your company will ensure that all your meetings are efficient. Still, you could find yourself being interrupted by well-organized and efficient meetings. On top of good organizational practices, healthy personal rules can also help your productivity.
Following the rules mentioned above should already reduce meetings to the most efficient ones. However, if meetings keep interrupting your maker’s schedule, they will still be a hindrance to your productivity. Below are some personal tips to help you regain your maker’s time.
Each company is unique and has different needs when it comes to internal communication. Even though I’m convinced that most companies would benefit from reducing meetings to a strict minimum, I also acknowledge the social benefit of meetings.
Sometimes, you have to let bad meetings slip through the gaps. In my company, we do one of these every week, voluntarily. Once a week, we organize a short all-hands meeting (as we are less than 10 people, this is still manageable). This meeting is dedicated to sharing two short weekly highlights, one professional and one personal. Even though this could be completely replaced by a written report (and we actually have one in parallel), the benefit of this meeting is to gather the team and have a relaxed discussion. The personal highlight also helps us bond, and quite often, laugh together.
Sometimes, you have to recognize the benefit of a simple talk. But we can allow this meeting because we know that all other meetings are efficient.
If you follow the advice in this post, you could easily reduce your time in meetings to a few hours per week, even if you are managing a team or a company. You don’t have to hate meetings if they are all relevant.