#62 Back at it

Taking an external meeting from external meetings, so I’m committing to 31 days of short writing format publishing. Today’s topic is an intro into why I’m taking the “meeting sabbatical” in the first place.

We live in a time where everyone wants to meet, but no one has anything to say.

When I was in-house counsel was when meeting culture really hit me hard. Before that, I worked in a big law firm, and while our hours were intense the number of hours on meetings wasn’t as high (I was also a grunt at the time so was more focused on doing the work than talking about the work). I learned that apart of the reason people weren’t as prone to put time on my calendar was my high hourly rate. Yes you could talk to me, but it’d have cost you $550 an hour.

When you’re inside of a corporate setting however, that’s not how salaries work. If you’re in-house counsel, you’re a set cost and your availability to the executive team is unlimited. That’s not the problem though. If someone on the exec team wants to bend my ear on an important matter or something they are thinking through then that’s fine, but it’s not usually the case that those people are taking advantage of the “meeting” exception. A lot of individual contributors believe that by blocking out meetings on their calendar, that there’s some expectation or perception that they are “busy.” I get it, we’ve all been there. Working for “the man” and not wanting to spend more time than you need to contributing to whatever false sense of accomplishment that gets you paid, but at the same time there’s an ethical consideration to be made. If the ethical considerations don’t move the needle for you, then I’d argue that there should be some selfish desire to better yourself with the time you have during the day which should keep you from distracting yourself with meetings. Spend that time learning a skill. Heck, do ANYTHING else. Just don’t wasn’t time (and other people’s time) in a meeting.

I remember being on a call and 35 people joined. After a morning of calls with too many people in the peanut gallery, something about it ticked me off enough to put me over the edge. Before we started that particular call I stated that “Everyone who reports to someone else on this call should drop. I’m going to drop for 1 minute and rejoin and expect it to be less than the number of people on this call.” I rejoined and there were only 6 people on the call. When I’m in meetings trying to figure out how to keep a particular department afloat, the last thing I want to see is 29 people wasting an hour of time on a call. The irony was the call was to figure out how to improve numbers and keep everyone on the team employed and avoid layoffs. The first time was to keep people productive and avoid the plauge of meeting culture.

Too many things to say, but not a lot to do.

If you give professional meeting takers time, they will take all of it and some more. You will gain little to nothing from it. I feel strongly that most meetings can be replaced with a well thought out email. Neither I or you should be a constant sounding board for people to think through their ideas. I’ve noticed that such violators of meeting etiquette tend to have a lot to say, but when it comes down to the brass tax of execution and next steps, those people are always quick to kick the ball to someone else. Instead of wasting the 30 minutes to an hour of a team’s time, why not spend that time writing a document and ask for the input of everyone on the team? If you feel like the email doesn’t give folks a chance to contribute meaningfully to the discussion, schedule a 15 minute call with everyone and/or individuals that have expressed they want to spend that time. Too often we fall victim to meeting FOMO and then end up just wasting another unit of time. I know I’m guilty of the same thing.

A change in tasks has a compound effect

Focus shifting. Multi-tasking. Professional ADHD. Whatever you want to call it, it is the silent killer of productivity. If you shift gears, it takes a few minutes to shift back into gear and get into “flow state.” This is why it’s so important to block time to work and avoid meetings. I’m not saying meetings are all bad, it’s good for the soul. Sometimes we need to get to work though and productivity and execution trump all the discussion you can have about a problem.

Here are some tips for getting tighter with meetings and regaining your time.

1. Come to meetings prepared. This is basic “set the example” type of leadership everyone can provide to their organization and team. When you show up to a meeting, sans any extraordinary situations, you should be prepared and ready to tackle everything in the meeting.
2. Set the tone, prior to the meeting. Call itineraries are a must. “We’ll talk about it live” isn’t good enough.
3. Limit the time. If I think a meeting can be handled in 30 minutes, I’ll allocate 20 minutes on the calendar. I’ve noticed that folks will grow the meeting to the amount of time that was allocated for it, regardless of the value that’s being generated from the additional time spent. Avoid that and use the phrase “I’m going to give you some of your time back” to end meetings early.

Good luck with clawing those minutes, minutes, days, weeks, months, and years back.