Six Problems with Business Meetings

March 26th, 2008 by hragitator | Posted in General Business |

Today, I spent the entire day in one long meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to reach a consensus on four issues and submit a recommendation to a decision making committee comprised of executives for final approval. It did not go as planned…

photo credit: mnadi

Leading up to this meeting I had conducted nearly two months of research, spoken to roughly 30 employees, and coordinated a global team of colleagues to canvass the business in their areas. To say the least, we had covered the organization as much as it was responsible to do so.

In this meeting, two of the four topics were resolved relatively easily with little debate. However, two of the topics were debated, at times heatedly, with the final outcome on both that we should conduct even more research. As you might imagine, this is not an optimal solution to move the business further, because at a certain point, you just have to make a decision.

To be clear, this is not a post to complain about my company or colleagues, because they all had excellent points and are intelligent workers. However, it did get me thinking about the most effective way to use meetings. I’ve found that if you need to solve a problem, and it requires buy in from many different individuals, the best way to do this is to talk to them individually. If you talk to someone alone, they are much more likely to be reasonable and understanding, calm and forthright, open and fair, flexible and insightful.

The problem with meetings is that they force people to take sides. In my meeting, I sometimes found myself arguing for things that I didn’t necessarily feel passionately about, but because someone was opposing me, I felt I needed to defend myself. Meetings almost force you to be standoffish with others for the following reasons:

• They’re probably sitting across from you, which feels confrontational.
• Others are watching, so you’re reputation is at stake.
• Your ego can be easily bruised, if someone makes a better point than you.
• You become emotional because of the often competitive nature.
• You probably don’t want to be in the meeting anyways and would rather be working.
• You might have gotten caught off guard by something you weren’t expecting.

Of course, meetings can’t be avoided, but we should keep these pitfalls in mind when we conduct them. Also, ask yourself whether you can responsibly gain consensus outside of a meeting. You should never be dishonest or withhold information, but you might save a lot of time by having several one-on-one discussions to set the stage before bringing people together.

Prepping a group in this way helps tear down the walls people put up in meetings because you’ve been able to explore all the issues beforehand. They feel they understand the subject completely and are prepared to talk in a reasonable, logical manner. I try not to call large meetings “cold” so to speak, but I could have followed my own advice better today.