How the meeting industrial complex hinders value creation
The proportion of the working day spent in meetings has risen steadily in recent decades and continues to increase year on year.
Official data on the time we spend in meetings is hard to come by. However, small-scale studies suggest that we are inundated with meetings. Back in 2016, a small group of labour researchers found that time spent in meetings has increased by 50 per cent since the 1990s. [1]
As organisations become more global and cross-functional, silos are breaking down, networking is increasing and ‘collaboration’ is seen as the key to business success. Data from the last two decades shows that the time spent by managers and employees on collaboration has increased by 50 per cent or more.
Agility and meeting culture – principles and values, or a list of meetings?
The trend towards agility has brought a large number of consultants onto the scene. Many of these Agile Coaches are only too happy to put people and interactions at the centre of their methods. In fact, the Agile Manifesto, written in 2001, defined this very principle as a core aspect of agile ways of working. Wherever Agile Coaches see a problem that requires a decision to be made, information to be shared or employees to be involved, the answer is communication and collaboration. And there is much to welcome about these developments – but communication also has its limits. An article in the Harvard Business Review states:
‘Buried under an avalanche of requests for input or advice, some employees spent so much time in meetings, taking calls, and sifting through their inboxes that their ‘most important work’ often had to wait until they got home. Meetings from 9am to 5pm pushed any creative or individual work to after dinner.’ [2]
In 2022, Microsoft published a study in which they observed employees using their software products. They found that a small mini-workday actually emerged in the late evening. Around a third of the employees studied worked just as much at 10 pm as they did at 8 am. [3] The reason? When the pandemic sent knowledge workers home, official meetings replaced casual interactions in the office and actual work was shifted to the evening hours. They also found that since 2020, the amount of time workers in their sample spent in meetings has tripled.
‘I think we’ve reached the peak of maximum human inefficiency among employees,’ said Jared Spataro, vice president at Microsoft who focuses on artificial intelligence and work trends, in an interview with The Atlantic. ‘Sometimes it seems like the modern worker spends more time talking about work than actually working.’ [4]
We need more meetings because the world around us is becoming more and more complicated. But is that actually true?
The meetings-industrial-complex lobby would now point out that an economy that is getting bigger and more complicated relies on bigger and more complicated organisations. As organisations grow, so do their bureaucratic habits. Departments emerge, and employees in these departments develop expertise, almost a language of their own, that is foreign to their colleagues down the hall. Interdepartmental work requires employees to spend more time keeping up to date with the work of their colleagues.
For example, imagine an online retailer makes a major change to its return policy. This could require a profit-loss analysis from the research department, input from a design team, front-end and back-end software developers to create a feature for consumers, coordination with shipping companies, and multiple layers of management to oversee the decision. A more complex economy with more complex businesses requires more communication between company departments, resulting in an ever-increasing number of meetings.
Recent cultural changes could also be a reason for the increase in meeting times. In recent years, the business world has become much more focussed on inclusion and giving more people a voice in decision-making. More and more co-determination is required. Self-organisation and the ‘entrepreneur within the company’ are the keywords that call for more networking.
Inclusion is a virtue that is strongly associated with costs and should therefore be used with caution. A corporate culture that allows more people to have their say automatically means that employees have to spend more time listening to others. This may be appropriate for some decisions, but inefficient and unnecessary for others.
30 minutes of meetings cost almost 60 minutes of working time
Complaining about too many meetings may not be an original protest, but it is basically justified. Perhaps the most common criticism is that many meetings are theatrically rehashed information that would have been best conveyed in an email.
The typical meeting is a time waster that demands people’s attention to an extent that cannot be measured simply by the number of hours blocked out for calls. In the age of hybrid work, ‘reaching employees’ means taking into account their location, time zone, schedule and availability, as well as perhaps preferences for phone, Zoom, Teams or Skype. This leads to an enormous, often invisible coordination effort.
Every interruption to the working day also leaves a trail of lost time. In on-site meetings, participants have to travel from their workplace to the meeting room and back. Worse, however, is that every interruption to the content of an activity leads to mental set-up costs; Gloria Mark from the University of California has found that employees need an average of 25 minutes to return to their original task after an interruption. [5] So from now on, plan a one-hour diversions for you and your employees for every 30-minute meeting.
Conclusion
To summarise, it can be said that although the Meeting Industrial Complex arose from well-intentioned approaches to improving collaboration and communication, it now often has a counterproductive effect. The excessive number and duration of meetings hinders the actual creation of value and leads to inefficient utilisation of working time and resources.
It is crucial that organisations find a balanced approach that enables the necessary communication without compromising the productive work of employees. Meetings should be carefully planned and only held when they offer clear added value.
As a company, we must have the courage to critically scrutinise and adapt our meeting culture. Introducing clear rules and structures for meetings, promoting alternative forms of communication and creating spaces for undisturbed work are steps in the right direction.
Only by managing our time consciously and purposefully can we increase the productivity and satisfaction of our employees and ultimately ensure the success of our company.
Notes:
Do you want to develop your company in such a way that it truly inspires users, customers and developers? Then simply connect with Benjamin Igna on LinkedIn and find an approach that suits you and your context. Alternatively, you can also go to it-agile.
[1] [2] Harvard Business Review: Collaborative Overload
[3] Microsoft: The Rise of the Triple Peak Day
[4] The Atlantic: Meetings Are Miserable
[5] University of California: Can’t pay attention? You’re not alone
More sources:
WFH Research: June 2024 Update
Microsoft: Driven to distraction
The Wall Street Journal: One Company’s Trick to Getting 95,000 Hours Back? Canceling Meetings
The Wall Street Journal: The ‘Coordination Tax’ at Work Is Wearing Us Down
The Wall Street Journal: Workplace Distractions: Here’s Why You Won’t Finish This Article
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Benjamin Igna has published another post on the t2informatik Blog:
The hidden story of agility
Benjamin Igna
Benjamin Igna holds a degree in industrial engineering and works for the management and organisational development consultancy it-agile. During his studies, he was able to familiarise himself extensively with the Toyota production system and the lean mindset in production. After his studies, he worked on agile forms of organisation, in particular Scrum and Kanban.
He is a partner at it-agile and helps organisations to find structures in which fulfilled employees can create better services and products.