Perhaps no time is more pertinent than the final weeks of classes to discuss the colossal waste of time that meetings can be. As the clock ticks on the final hours of the semester, we should strive to save ourselves and our classmates from the pitfalls of the ever-present extraneous meeting.
Most meetings, especially informational and decision-making meetings, are an inherently unproductive endeavor because they take critical time away from action. Rather than using that time to make measurable progress on whatever deadline is trying to be met, time is instead misdirected towards the inefficient and often trivial discussion that occurs during meetings. In a research project done by the Harvard Business Review, the team found that for one large corporation, over 300,000 person hours were spent on a single weekly excom meeting over the course of the entire year (this figure doesn’t include time spent preparing for the meetings). Parkinson’s law explains another way meetings waste time. According to this law work will expand to fill the time allotted. Calling a group meeting for an hour means that it is going to fill that hour, regardless of whether all of the key points and tasks were communicated or completed in the first 15 minutes (or perhaps even before people arrived). The time burden increases when considering the time it takes to get to a meeting if it’s held in a location that isn’t central to participants. Meetings come at a tremendous opportunity cost for those involved and that cost should be valued accordingly when making the decision of whether or not to hold a “quick” meeting.
Having established the inherent cost of holding a meeting, it is worthwhile to mention that some meetings are in fact necessary. It is hard to imagine a world in which old-fashioned face-to-face meetings are totally extraneous. Human interaction and discussion is absolutely necessary to creatively solve a problem or arrive at a decision that effectively incorporates and considers relevant parties and stakeholders. However, given the high cost of holding a meeting and the available alternatives it seems silly not to utilize available resources to save and protect one of our most precious resources: time.
In this age, we enjoy the privileges of technology that can rapidly disseminate information to vast groups of people. These available technologies offer far fewer time-intensive alternatives to the traditional informational meeting. If the goal of a meeting is simply to update your team on new information regarding the group project, it most likely can be communicated far faster via email, a phone call, group message or any other messaging device most people have easy access to. The same can be said for progress reports, updates and other reports that are meant to provide everyone with the same information. While email can be a faster method of communicating, it does rely on the fact that the other parties routinely and punctually keeps up with their mailboxes. In my experience, I have found people are often more than willing to be more diligent with email if it means it saves them the displeasure of cramming yet another meeting into their lives.
If it’s absolutely necessary to hold a meeting, there are plenty of tips and tricks to help minimize the cost. For one, the aforementioned Parkinson’s law should be taken into consideration and used advantageously. According to this law, decreasing the amount of time will have no effect on whether the key tasks get completed. Additionally, the increased sense of urgency may also help ensure the most critical tasks are pushed to the top of the agenda.
Whether it’s for a group project, CIO, Greek life or any other organization, extracurricular meetings are almost universally a dreaded event that seldom accomplish much. While it’s tempting to call another meeting to “figure things out,” it rarely offers a good return for the amount of time invested. Being able to discern when a meeting is absolutely necessary as well as utilizing proper alternatives are great ways to use time more efficiently and effectively while also communicating to your co-workers/team members that you value their time. Cutting out these extraneous meetings helps free up more time for doing work faster and to greater effect than before.
Jake Olson is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at j.olson@cavalierdaily.com.
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