The meeting is dead. Long live the meeting

Remote working showed us there’s a better way to do some things, and meetings are one of those things

Some cultures breed terrible meetings. Nobody forgets their first full-scale civil service meeting: 20+ people, 90+ minutes. Everyone has their say, nobody listens. No decisions are made, no problems are solved. Same time next week for more of the same.

Some meetings change the world. Stuart Chambers, chairman of chipmaker ARM Holdings, was on holiday in the Turkish Riviera when Masayoshi Son, founder of the $100bn SoftBank VisionFund, arrived by private jet to take him for lunch at a waterfront restaurant. Less than two weeks later, ARM had been bought by Son for £24bn in cash.

That’s a proper, life-changing business meeting between two people in person. It just wouldn’t have been the same over Zoom.

We all know most meetings are rubbish. Half of all attendees don’t speak and half check their phone while someone else is speaking, a recent survey found, and many of us do both. You’re not listening, you don’t need to be there, and you learn nothing — or come out more confused than when you went in. You were unproductive.

It’s annoying, but there’s a bigger issue. The UK economy has had a problem with productivity, measured as each worker’s hourly contribution to GDP. Since 2008, we’ve been stuck at the same level. We’ve run out of ways to make ourselves more useful.

Remarkably, productivity went up during 2020. Of course, retail and hospitality –generally less productive per hour than office work — were closed, but that doesn’t entirely explain it. Covid and lockdown sparked many companies into long-overdue action, such as investment in tech, in training and in a transformation of the way we work. It made us see that there’s a much better way to do some things at work, including meetings.

The habits that used to shackle us to our routines are scattered all over the floor. Not being able to meet in person has changed our mindsets about where we need to meet — and about the purpose of a meeting in the first place. It’s a great time to make a change.

Email or meeting? Excerpt from our book: Now for the tricky bit

First, the place. Whether you meet in person or not is a much more important question now than it ever was before. There is absolutely a right time to meet in person. The difference now is that we recognise the extra effort and extra commitment that it takes from people. There are some things better done in person: collaborating, having difficult or sensitive conversations and, of course, socialising. Those things can and should be prioritised. They’re better because they’re about proper human interaction — the kind of instinctive natural exchange of ideas that we do best face-to-face.

Second, the purpose. Meetings are a very useful tool. When done well, they help busy people make good decisions about important things. That’s essential to any business running well. The problem is when they become a default setting.

Decisions, decisions: In person or remote?

The first part of having a better meeting means focusing on what it’s for.

Problem solving. Take a knotty issue, and bring together people who really know what they’re talking about and people who have the authority to make decisions about it. Create an environment where everyone is heard and respected. Problem solved.

Decision making. An opportunity to bring all the evidence together and make your case to a decision maker. In theory it’s a time saver for everyone and something to focus minds. However, it’s tempting for decision makers to get involved before all the facts are known, wasting their time, and for overcautious corporate cultures to insist on decision-making meetings for trivial issues.

Information sharing. Sometimes these meetings are essential but definitely not always. If the information is flowing one way, it’s probably not. If it is a discussion, then yes. If you’re expecting lots of questions, also yes.

If your meeting is properly focused you’re halfway there. Most meetings aren’t. It’s unlikely you’ve ever drifted off to check your phone in a job interview, and that’s because it has a strong consequence. Meetings need consequences. People engage in meetings where outcomes are clear and immediate.

When Magnetic works with organisations where employees aren’t engaged, one of the common comments we hear is that discussion doesn’t lead to action. It creates inertia and a sense that time spent working, particularly in meetings, has been wasted.

If we’re saying that quality communication is best done in person , what does it mean for the purpose of a meeting? It means being honest with ourselves about what most meetings are for.

Most are transactional. Who’s doing what? What shall we focus on next? That’s fine — and those meetings are ideal for virtual meetings. Time is not wasted on travel. You can hear each other, you can probably see each other, you can get through lots of information, questions and clarifications, and you can get to the same place without leaving your home.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we should accept pointless online meetings either. The downside of these is how easy they are to arrange, how hard they are to say no to and how easily they stack up back-to-back in our diaries. The key to the success of any meeting is that you know what you’re trying to achieve before you send the invite or press accept… not when you join the call.