Zero to Sixty in 59 Minutes (or less)
Usually when I walk into a meeting, I have several goals:
* Arrive prepared – respect yourself
* Arrive on time – respect others
* Learn as much as I can – you may as well learn and meetings go faster
* Enjoy the meeting – it’s okay to have fun
* Leave the meeting without any tasks – okay, not always realistic, but at least try to leave with only your own tasks and not anyone else’s
* If the meeting is scheduled for one hour, leave by the 59 minute mark – create a sense of urgency
The last item is the real point here. We usually schedule meetings in hour or half-hour increments, which is fine, but it’s not necessary to take all the time allotted just because it’s there. We owe it to ourselves and to our colleagues not to waste our time or theirs – meetings should be more like SWAT team exercises – get in, get it done, and get out. Well, perhaps that’s a little too tight – we do need time for camaraderie and team building (nobody likes to tell stories or have sidebar conversations more than me) – but you get the idea.
Healthy and productive meeting characteristics include a beginning and an end, a purpose and an agenda, the right people in attendance, decisions and action items clearly documented, other narrative notes kept to a minimum (why write down anything that no one ever refers to again?), and finally and perhaps firstly, someone to lead the meeting and keep it on track. Also, if you are deciding between a 60 minute meeting and a 90 minute meeting, only choose 90 minutes if it’s going to help avoid a second one hour meeting – otherwise, move the agenda along more quickly.
Following (or even during) some unhealthy or unproductive meetings, I have had thoughts like the following:
* “That’s two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.”
* “After five minutes, I became so numb that I forgot my own name.”
* “What just happened there?”
* “Did we actually do anything?”
Don’t leave yourself or your colleagues with those thoughts – you and they deserve better.
I’ll leave you with my 2007 motto for FAS: All one hour meetings in less than 60 minutes. Let’s do it.
posted by Neal R. Hoss @ 7:52 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
As part of my ongoing research in Organizational Behavior, I have come across a mathematical formula for evaluating optimal effectiveness of meetings based upon the number of attendees and time durations.
The success rate of a meeting decreases exponentially by the number of participants over 3 added to minutes over 15 squared [(P-3)+(M-15)]^2. Next time you are in some mindless, boring meeting, try the math yourself. Any score over 1000; you will see people falling asleep; 'futzing' with their PDA's or staring mindlessly at a fly crawling on a ceiling.
Think about it using the following set of data. There are 8 people attending a meeting. The meeting is scheduled to last for 30 minutes. Using the formula above; the results would be as follows:
(8 - 3) + (30 - 15) ^2
= (5 + 15)^2
= 20^2
= 400
Is 400 less than 1000? Yes, so this was probably a good meeting in that nobody fell asleep; did not have time to 'futz' with a PDA nor have time to locate a fly on the ceiling.
Now take the same number of attendees and increase the meeting time to 1 hour; and this is what happens:
(8 - 3) + (60 - 15)^2
= (5 + 45)^2
= 50^2
= 2500
Is 2500 less than 1000? No, so this was probably a typical waste of time exercise where people.....(fill-in the blanks) under the guise of "group empowerment" produced a "to-do" list calling for yet another hour-long meeting to measure goal attainment from the "to-do" list. Look familiar?
Thomas J. Weir, MBA
Campus Vehicle Inspector
California State University San Marcos
760-750-4607 Office
tweir@csusm.edu
http://www.csusm.edu/facilities/AutomotiveCarForm.htm
**A CleanCities Partner**
Thanks Tom. Glad to know my gut feeling has some sort of emperical evidence behind it - I'll be on the lookout for folks calculating meeting effectiveness at my next meeting. Of course there is the camaraderie part that we don't want to miss and of course my storytelling...however, we should come away with some decisions and action items too...in less than 60 minutes. Thanks again.
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