Ten thousand meeting attendees can’t be wrong. A professor who has researched the science of meetings for 15 years says his team’s surveys of meeting attendees show clear ways that meetings can be improved for all involved, as reported in the Wall Street Journal:
“I wish I could go to more meetings,” said no one, ever. Meetings consume and waste a massive, rising amount of individual and organizational time. In a survey last year by Salary.com, “too many meetings” was the top time-waster at the office, cited by 47% of 3,164 workers. The scheduling platform Doodle estimates that 700 million hours will be lost in U.S. workplaces this year to unnecessary or wasteful meetings.
But meetings themselves are not the problem. They are essential to teams and organizations, supporting inclusion, communication, and coordination. Abolishing meetings is a false solution.
Sadly, most companies and most leaders view poor meetings as inevitable, like living with rain in London. But, unlike the weather, meetings can be improved. My own research team has been working on these issues for 15 years, including interviews and surveys of some 10,000 employees across many organizations. We’ve found that improving just … The Wall Street Journal
