Useful Meetings, Harmful Meetings

"Why do we hold meetings?"
"What is the purpose of tying up that time and spending it unproductively?"
"Has the ROI (Return on Investment) for meetings been considered?"

Are you all holding meetings after giving them proper thought?

Meetings held without any thought might indeed yield results that satisfy the organizer, but that is nothing more than self-satisfaction. From the perspective of the overall business or project, they are often wasteful and it is not uncommon for them to be nothing but a nuisance to the people forced to attend.

Surprisingly, many such meetings could be solved by methods other than a meeting if you just made a little effort to reach out.

Meetings that "decide nothing" are a waste

In this world, there are meetings that are not held "to decide something."

What is the difference between a long, wasteful meeting and a short, productive one?

There are various factors, but the fundamental deciding factor is "whether or not the purpose is clear."

To summarize, the purpose of a meeting is nothing other than "decision-making." Whether it is problem-solving or project planning, there is always a decision to identify an action plan for "what to do next." If the future actions do not change regardless of whether you hold the meeting or not, that meeting is a "waste."

If you recognize that the purpose is to make a decision and that making a decision is the goal of the meeting, the selection of members will inevitably become appropriate. The waste of calling and tying up many people who have nothing to do with the matter will also disappear.

Next, "what constitutes a decision" is also an important point.

Decision-making requires "speed" so that the team can quickly move to action, and "accuracy (quality)" to lead the action to success. However, if you seek too much speed, the quality will be a hasty decision of about 50 points, and if you try to perfect the accuracy, the quality will approach 100 points, but it will take too much time.

Therefore, what is important is to aim for "70-point" accuracy between the two.

If you can find a "70% OK" direction that seems as fast as possible and reliable, you can say that the purpose of the meeting has been fulfilled.

Create a "template" for proposals and share them two days in advance

So, what is needed to reach a "70-point decision" in the shortest time?

First, an "agenda" that states what is to be decided is essential. The meeting convener must collect proposals in advance and create a document that clearly states the agenda items.

The proposer will create materials accordingly, but what I recommend here is to standardize the summary of the proposal. This is a single document that clearly states the issues, causes, solutions, effects, execution schedule, and costs. In other words, this agenda becomes a "project plan" for the project activity known as a "meeting body."

Managers and supervisors who correctly understand the importance of project management on a daily basis will almost certainly create some kind of agenda. This is because if they do not, the project known as a "meeting body" risks collapsing due to small talk or digressions from the agenda.

The format does not matter.
You can create materials in Excel, Word, or PowerPoint, or simply list them in the body of an email.

If you share this template with yourself, your subordinates, and ideally the entire company, and establish a rule to prepare it before the meeting, you can inform everyone of the meeting's content in advance and improve the precision of the discussion on the day.

Also, it is better to have multiple proposals.

If there is a comparison, it is easier to convey the characteristics, and you can clearly present the pros and cons.
Be careful, as having only one proposal can give the impression that "this is all you could think of." If you have two or more, the psychology of the meeting attendees is less likely to be fixated on "evaluating a GO/NO GO" and more likely to shift to a positive mindset of "choosing one of them."

Also, be sure to email the agenda to all attendees about two days before the meeting.

Attendees can know what will be discussed in advance, and if there are any sudden changes, you have two days to make corrections.

Make adjustments tailored to the personality of the decision-maker

As you can see, the secret to shortening meeting time lies in"preparation".
The proposer should ensure the quality of the proposal itself is high, including the preparation of materials. This is because if the initial proposal is not easy to understand and persuasive, it will lead to useless questions and circular discussions.

What is important is"understanding the personality and values of the decision-maker".

It is easy to get caught up in thinking only about "what I want to assert," but you are not the one making the decision. If you had the authority to decide yourself, there would be no need to hold a meeting. Since you are in a position to have someone else decide, what is truly necessary is to think about "how to guide them in a direction that makes it easy to decide."

If the decision-maker is a logical type, it might be effective to thoroughly build up the data that serves as evidence for the "causes" and "effects" in the summary.

If they are the type who values enthusiasm, pay attention to your tone when proposing; if they are the type who cares about coordination with other departments, focus on groundwork. Change where you "raise the precision" according to the other person.

Also, if you are going to facilitate, do some mental rehearsal in advance. Briefly simulate things like "time allocation from start to finish" and "who to ask for comments."

Meetings often have"people who confuse the conversation"who will derail the discussion.

Even in such cases, if the facilitator has a clear picture of the goal, they can get back on track by saying,"Let's hear about that individually later."

And the biggest hurdle isthe person who "only" (can) negate..

This type of person exists in a meeting setting with the purpose of hindering "decision-making"—in other words, they have nothing but malice. In reality, there are also people who don't even have such a clear purpose and just make it a habit to negate things daily. They probably aren't satisfied unless they do so.

It is a problem that such people belong to the organization and are allowed to participate in meetings, but it is difficult to identify that possibility in advance because their titles and positions act as a cloak.

If they at least offered counterproposals or improvements, we could have a more constructive conversation, but since they just want to "negate," they won't think positively (you can measure whether it's just malice or if they are negating for a truly appropriate reason by checking if "the basis is logical" or "there is a constructive counterproposal").

"I want to get in others' way"
"I want to move things as I please"
"No matter how good the content is, I don't want to accept it unless it's something I decided myself"

Such a self-centered, child-like personality significantly hinders activities in a social setting. The presence of even one such person causes the growth of a team or organization to stagnate remarkably.

Furthermore, it begins to interfere with coordination with others and other departments, and eventually, the surrounding people involved will become exhausted. Therefore, when deciding on personnel to take on core roles in a team, it is necessary to take into account not only ability and performance but also personality and character (integrity).

Daring to have subordinates attend meetings for higher-level positions

Meetings range in scale from large groups to small groups.
As they become larger, the number of people tied up increases and they take more time.
Also, when they become large-scale, even just coordinating schedules incurs a great deal of cost.

Therefore, managers and supervisors need to devise ways to increase the ratio of small-group meetings and 1-on-1s on a daily basis. People who blindly promote "all-hands" type meetings likely lack confidence in their own abilities.

To devise such ways, first,

- Reduce the number of "large meetings" you attend yourself
- Do not make them "large meetings"

is important.

For example, if you "show your face only at the first meeting to grasp the overall picture of the project, and then have subordinates attend and receive reports afterward," you can use the time you have created for small-group meetings and reporting/communication with your subordinates, and increase the number of decisions you can make at your level.

This is also important from the perspective of subordinate development.

By attending meetings with people in higher positions, subordinates can learn about "what the higher-ups are thinking." When having them attend, encourage them to think, "What would you do if you were in my position?"

Then, at the time of reporting, confirm not only the facts but also the subordinate's own views and proposals.
With this, subordinates gain the ability to summarize information concisely and the skill to "think for themselves."
Sometimes it is also good to attend "meetings of people above you" as an observer yourself. Expose yourself to discussions at the top or executive level and make yourself think about what opinions you would express.

By placing yourself in higher-level settings one by one and training your thinking in this way, the proposal-making ability of each subordinate will improve. This will lead not only to the improvement of meeting quality but also to surely boosting organizational productivity.

The meeting purpose with the lowest cost-effectiveness is "information sharing"

Leaders and managers who do not understand the essence of meetings tend to make "information sharing" their goal, but naturally, as I have explained up to this point, such things are not included in the purpose of the meeting itself from the beginning.

• The method of just conveying things orally can end up relying on "memory" and "perception"

• However, if everything can be covered by meeting minutes, then only "meeting minutes" are needed

This could lead to a situation where it becomes clear from the start that the "meeting structure" itself is meaningless. If everything can be covered by documents or records equivalent to meeting minutes, then in many cases, it could have been handled from the beginning via documentation, email, or chat.

In other words,

the organizer
due to personal ego
for their own selfish convenience
without giving any thought to cost-effectiveness

is simply holding the meeting.

Even though many methods for information sharing have been established in the world, the only reason people still want to use meetings as a venue for information sharing is

because they "do not want to document it (do not want to create it, it is a hassle)".

It is nothing more than that.

Even though sharing could be achieved by leaving a record such as meeting minutes and distributing them, the primary reason for dragging everyone involved into a meeting and stealing their productive time is simply that "creating the document myself" is a hassle.

There are also people who hold meetings for information sharing even though they do create meeting minutes.

This is likely because they are blindly carrying out a "chronically" "hollowed-out" process. They have stopped thinking, and the purpose itself has already vanished. While there might be some meaning in simply participating, if there is no effort to find that value, it can be called a failure nine times out of ten. Since the purpose of the meeting itself is likely no longer clear, there is no value in attending.

Finally,

It is very important to "eliminate waste."

Eliminating waste = lowering corporate costs

This is natural because it leads directly to that. The effect on each individual may not be significant, but try calculating the number of people participating in the meeting structure multiplied by the annual number of meetings. Then, multiply that by the hourly cost of the members participating.

You will be surprised at the incredible amount of cost being lost.

Are you really producing results that justify that cost?

Even if an individual's assigned sales target is 100 million and they achieve it, that does not mean everything is fine. This is because costs directly lead to a decline in profit margins. Moreover, a meeting structure deeply involves not just yourself, but others as well. If you are harming the profit targets of the people you have involved, it is possible that you are hindering corporate contribution because of yourself.

There are many companies that have failed to understand this and have only allowed their meeting structures to expand, but all of them have eventually exceeded the limit of their break-even point somewhere, forcing them to significantly downsize their business and reset.

To prevent this from happening, each person needs to be conscious and work on thoroughly eliminating waste so as not to promote unnecessary hardship and costs.