How much does a bad meeting cost you?

We all know that loads of time (and therefore money) is wasted in meetings that are either pointless or poorly run, but those very clever people over at the Harvard Business Review and come up wit a little tool to shock us into realising that time actually costs money. If you click on the image to the left, you will go to their ‘tool’ to do so.

In itself, it isn’t very clever, but it does make you a little more aware of the fact that we are wasting money in these meetings.  So what is it that tends to lead people to have bad meetings?  They usually spring from good intentions… “We need to communicate..” 

But before you bring a number of valuable assets together, you need to be clear:-

1. What do you want to or need to achieve?
2. Is the purpose of this meeting to make a decision, or review progress?
3. Who actually needs to be there?  (The more people present, the harder it is to run, the less effective it tends to be and it certainly is more expensive!)
4. What preparation do they (and you!) need to do for it?
5. What tools / technology do require to be available to you?
6. What is the right environment for this meeting?  On site, or off?

These are just a few of the questions you need to answer.  If the meeting is important and there are serious consequences to it not delivering well, then I would suggest you consider getting some expert support from a trained facilitator.  This will do a number of things for you:-

1. Release you to fully participate in the actual meeting rather than splitting you attention between being a contributor and chairperson.
2. It will signal to everyone that this meeting is important
3. They will be able to notice things that might escape your attention, such as people not participating or holding back
4. They will be able to challenge ‘group think’ and ask ‘dumb’ questions that can often be very powerful
5. They will ensure your meeting is properly designed and prepared for
6. And they should ensure that you don’t waste time and do get your required result

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2016 at 11:11 and is filed under Communication, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.