What Are Your Meetings Saying about Your Corporate Culture?
You’ve probably seen the horrific numbers on the effectiveness of business meetings.
In 2019, Doodle did a survey of 6,500 professionals in the U.S., Germany and the UK, covering 19 million meetings. These were its top findings:
- Poorly organized meetings mean I don’t have enough time to do the rest of my work (44%)
- Unclear actions lead to confusion (43%)
- Bad organization results in a loss of focus on projects (38%)
- Irrelevant attendees slow progress (31%)
- Inefficient processes weaken client/supplier relationships (26%)
Neuroscientists created a term for the harm that poor meetings do: meeting recovery syndrome.
This video presents three tangible tactics you can use to prevent meeting recovery syndrome from sucking the life out of your organization’s productivity.
But this is the big takeaway:
Our meetings reflect our corporate culture.
We can’t say we respect our people and then make them sit through meetings that are disorganized — and drain their energy.
We can’t say we believe in work/life balance then rob them of their time and attention through too-long meetings — so they must steal hours from their personal lives to make up their work.
We can’t say we value transparency when we won’t send an agenda enough in advance so people know why they need to be at a meeting and how to prepare for it.
Meetings definitely are one place where too many organizations have gotten flabby. Be ruthless in evaluating the meetings you lead, so they are lean and mean. Give constructive feedback to others on their meetings.
Doodle’s research says that poorly organized meetings cost U.S. businesses $399 billion in 2019. Take charge and stop the bleeding where you work.