Squandering Time: How Many Hours to Support One Executive Team Meeting?

Source:  Pixabay

Michael Mankins, a partner in Bain & Company’s San Francisco office, published a short blog post for Harvard Business Review several years ago.  Bob Sutton reminded us about the research this week on Twitter.  In the post, Mankins provided highlights from an in-depth study of meetings and time management at one large organization.  Here's what Mankins and his team found:

How much time does your organization squander? My colleagues and I gathered data about time use at one large company and found that people there spent 300,000 hours a year just supporting the weekly executive committee meeting.  

You read that correctly... 300,000 person-hours per year supporting one top management team meeting.   Where does the time go?   Hundreds of other meetings take place to prepare executives for this one senior meeting which they must attend weekly. Mankins writes, "Research shows that 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings—a percentage that has increased every year since 2008. No amount of money can buy back that time. It must be treated more preciously."

How can managers change their behavior in light of this research?  Here are five key questions one can ask as you call for and prepare for meetings:

1.  What is the purpose of the meeting?  What are we trying to achieve?  

2.  Who should attend this meeting?  Who does NOT need to be there?

3.  How should we structure the meeting?  How will that structure help us achieve the outcomes we desire?

4.  What pre-work should participants do, and what materials should we distribute in advance, so that we use our meeting time efficiently?  

5.  How do I plan to follow up so as to insure that we do what we say we are going to do after the meeting?  What will I do if we don't achieve the results we expect as a result of decisions taken during the meeting?