How to create a burning platform to tackle meeting culture

Meetings: impact everyone, owned by no one 

The research is pretty clear. Meetings take up a significant volume of time(1) and only around half of this time is perceived to be valuable(2) but we need them to do collaborative work (3).

I don’t see many people disputing this triad. 

The people experiencing the impact of too many ineffective meetings are often not those with the power to change them. Come to think of it, who does actually have the power to change ‘all meetings’?

It’s not in anyone’s job description. It’s not in anyone’s budget. It’s no one’s objective. 

It might need to be you who creates the burning platform. 

Who delivers a wake up call and galvanises support.

This matters. We can change it. Let’s do something.

The current cohort of Meeting Pioneers faced exactly this scenario. They wanted to make an impact on the meeting culture and they knew my programme was going to be a great way to do that. 

But no one had put them in charge of meetings. They needed to create a burning platform to get agreement from others that this was something worth spending time on - and something that was likely to have an impact.

Here’s how to do it.

A space

Find a platform. A gap in a session - any opportunity for a reflect conversation with influencers.

Show don't tell

Get hold of screenshots of a typical week's calendar from 10 people in the organisation. Say "I want to show you something". Pass them round. Ask: "When you look at these, what do you think?"

For some organisations, this is enough. The reality of densely packed diaries with vague names like ‘check in’ and ‘catch up’ and ‘website discussion’ makes the case. No further discussion required. We need to do something. Go do it.

Thoughtful, provocative questions

For others organisations, questions like these help develop the burning platform.

- What proportion of the time in these meetings do you think is truly moving the organisation forward?

- Imagine you’re a [insert job title of the calendar owner] with responsibility to [insert their main deep work goal] - and this is your calendar for this week. How do you feel about this week? When are you going to get [insert business critical deep work tasks] done?

- Meetings are clearly vital for the collaborative work we do. But why do you think we have quite so many? What is it about our culture that means people end up spending so much of their working time in meetings?

- Given we go to so many, what are we doing about making these meetings the most powerful and progressive interactions they can be?

- Is the way we do meetings a match for the culture we aspire to be? Is it a match for the type of organisation we say we are to our customers and our potential hires?

- Are our meetings the best use of our precious time and talent? 

A rallying cry

Summarise the discussion back. "I’ve heard A, B and C today. Is this something we are prepared to do something about?"

There is no specific proposed solution at this stage. No discussion of agendas, starting and finishing on time - doubling down on meeting discipline. Just a commitment to explore and develop new approaches. This could be via something like Meeting Pioneers or you could do something completely different.