3 Ways to avoid pointless meetings

Get control over your calendar and learn how to avoid the endless stream of pointless meetings at work

Meetings … urgh … why do we have so many of them? Not only that, why do we have so many pointless meetings? If you are fed up with spending your work day trapped in meetings, try these three simple ways to avoid pointless meetings.

1. Stop having status update meetings
2. Decline blank meeting invitations
3. Don’t create your own pointless meetings

Many of us don’t consider the first point, and most of us aren’t aware we are doing the second. Read on to find out why these are the two best ways to avoid pointless meetings. Having better meetings is easier than you think.

1. Stop having general status update meetings

How painful is it to sit in a room (or on zoom) and listen to people drone on about what their team did that week?

95% of the people in the room get no value from those updates.

Other people in your team either already know the information or they don’t need to know it. Think about the status updates you have sat through. How much did you care what the other team did last week? Did it affect you in any way? probably not.

Maybe the boss cares about the information. But then again, our status updates are usually a disorganized laundry list of tasks and activities. The boss needs to listen to the whole list to find what they think is valueable.

How to fix this? Meetings that are set up to share information can be done by email, newsletter, or some other written method. People can read written messages in their own time. If written information is coupled with a clear way to ask questions then a status meeting isn’t necessary.

2. Decline blank meeting invitations

Would you walk up to someone, tell them to be in a meeting room at 10am tomorrow, and then walk away without giving them any more information? I doubt it. That would be rude.

Blank meeting invitations are rude.

If you wouldn’t do it in person, why is it ok to do it in an invitation?

Sending meeting invitation at work is no different from sending a birthday party invitation. You wouldn’t send a blank invitation with no information about the party or what the guest should bring. Why should it be any different at work?

If people send you blank invitations you have choice.

• Accept and find out what the meeting is about when you get there.
• Ask questions to find out what the meeting is about (this takes time and effort)
• Decline the meeting

The first choice is risky, you are risking your valuable time by attending a meeting without a clear purpose. The second choice takes time and effort as you chase the person who sent you the message. Declining the meeting is the quickest and easiest option. If the organizer really wants you to attend, they have to put the effort in to contact you and explain what the meeting is for. which is what they should have done in the first place.

3. Don’t create your own pointless meetings

It’s easy to point the finger at other people as the cause of pointless meetings. But we must also make sure our own meetings are valuable.

There is a simple trick that dramatically increases the chance of a meeting being valuable. This trick works before the meeting even starts!

What is it? It’s simple … write good meeting invitations.

Relevant meetings have good content in the invitation. The content of the invite shows the topic of the meeting. It shows why the meeting is being set up (to solve a problem, answer a question, create a plan, etc.). The invite should also show the expected outcome and output. What will the people in the meeting create during their time together, a list of actions, an approved plan, etc., or something else?

If the invite has these things you can instantly tell if the meeting is valuable for you and if you can add value to it.

How can you tell the difference between a relevant meeting and one that won’t really add value? A relevant meeting has a good invitation with useful information for the attendees.

Conclusion

Pointless meetings happen when people are inefficient, unprepared, and disorganized. If you want to avoid pointless meetings, follow these three simple steps:

1. Don’t waste time giving status updates that 95% of the people in the room don’t need to hear.
2. Decline blank meeting invitations — if someone can’t be bothered to tell you what an event is about why should you go?
3. Make sure your own meeting invitations are well written and informative.

Unnecessary meetings damage reputations. If you waste people’s time they will not have a high opinion of you.

(Photos zoff-photo & others)

Originally published at https://chrisfenning.com on December 13, 2021.