Escape From Meeting Hell

It's time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.

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Quick show of hands: Who hates meetings?

So that's most of you. It's not surprising. Workers across this land are gripped by soul-deadening angst as they shuffle down the hall every Wednesday at 3:30 to go review "housekeeping issues." Days, weeks, months, years of our lives are slipping away in stuffy, overcrowded conference rooms and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Michael Doyle and David Straus, authors of the 1976 classic How to Make Meetings Work, famously claimed that there were 11 million meetings in the U.S. every day, and that executives spent 50% of their time in them. And for what? Doyle and Straus have been in print for 28 years, and while meetings are up to 25 million a day, according to Doyle, they generally don't work. They bring down morale and blow holes in the workday, and pitifully few constructive ideas come out of them--which, of course, means that yet another round of meetings is called....

Take into account the bottom line, and the picture is even grimmer. For all the value they're getting from meetings, some companies might as well open the windows and throw cash to the breeze--at least it would save time. "Meetings should be a precious resource, but they're treated like a necessary evil," says social psychologist Kenneth Sole, who runs Sole & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in organizational behavior. Sole, who has worked with diverse clients that include Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, NASA, Apple, and the United Nations, often asks executives to imagine a meeting with 15 of their top-level people. On the wall at this imaginary meeting is a giant meter with a running total of both the costs of the wages of those assembled and the revenue they aren't bringing in while they're languishing in a conference room. It's a sobering exercise.

Fortunately, there is good news--like Good News, the required 15-minute Monday-morning gathering at American Megacom, a communications consultancy in Livonia, Mich. CEO Jane Sydlowski shares the love through positive updates about what employees have accomplished in sales, client satisfaction, and public relations. "They know how to make you blush," says Sean Stevens, a sales specialist at the firm. "The ego stroking can get a little nauseating, but I know I can rely on those people because of the confidence they get knowing how they are helping the business."

That's just one example of a company fighting to break the chains of mediocrity. There are more. This may astound you, but companies everywhere are holding meetings, week in and week out, that are successful and productive and that employees look forward to. Creative minds are solving the problems that have plagued conference rooms since the dawn of the regularly scheduled postlunch get-together. Below you'll see how.

"I really don't know how to run a meeting"

Hire--or create--a specialist

Entrepreneurs want their employees to be the best at what they do, whether it's in accounting, sales, or restocking the soda machine. But little thought is given to who is most qualified to take charge of hours upon hours of company time. "There is an art to running meetings as a forum for shared problem solving," says Anne Donnellon, professor of management at Babson College and author of Team Talk: The Power of Language in Team Dynamics. "So why wouldn't you send someone to get training and make quality facilitation a primary function of an internal employee?"

That someone could well be the boss. By default, managers run meetings, and many business owners assume that they know what they're doing--even if the entire company disagrees. Local consulting firms and business schools, and occasionally bookstores and libraries, offer improvement courses.

"Everyone slumps down and zones out"

Stand up for yourself

Nobody likes meetings; nobody likes standing for long periods of time. Ergo, to meet on the feet should keep things moving along. It's the way Dan Cunningham, CEO of Dan's Chocolates in Braintree, Mass., likes it, so he holds standing meetings a couple of times a month, even when somebody from outside the office is involved. Cunningham wants these meetings focused on immediate problems, which is nicely emphasized by the lack of physical comfort. "Variables on a problem constantly change," says Cunningham. "We would rather do triage right over the patient then sit down and put something together that we'll just end up revisiting in a few days."

Gary Berman, CEO of Greyhawk North America, a construction management and consulting firm in Woodbury, N.Y., is a former stander--and don't think he won't go back to it. He also reserves the right to push meetings to 5 p.m. on Friday, which ensures that employees don't hold court with their long-winded war stories. The natural itch to start the weekend drives people to the heart of the matter; they figure out what needs to be done and go home.

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