Top 7 Reasons Why Executive Meetings Fail

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith ~ Did you know that there are over 11 million formal meetings held every day in America? According to a study conducted by the University of Arizona, that comes to more than 3 billion meetings per year. Most managers spend an estimated 20% of their working hours in formal meetings of five or more people. A meeting between several executive leaders may run a firm over $1000 per hour or more in salary costs alone. Ineffective or unproductive meetings could cost Fortune 50 companies losses of more than $75 million per year. A New York consulting firm, Communispond, Inc., conducted a survey of 471 management leaders and found that well over one-half of the managers surveyed considered most meetings to be a “waste of time.” Almost 90% recognized the failure of most meetings to be due to a “lack of advanced planning and organization,” and over 75% of those polled pointed out that they received no proper training on how to conduct a meeting in the first place. If you’re looking for answers on how to make executive meetings more productive, it’s important to understand the top seven reasons why executive meetings fail: Lack of a goal or objective. If you’re unclear on what you need to achieve in the meeting, the end results of the meeting will also be loose-ended. Establish a purpose or objective for the meeting. This way you know what to expect as a proposed outcome. Clearly identify the issues you want to resolve or discuss and what you want to achieve. Not preparing an agenda beforehand. Not preparing a meeting agenda in advance can lead to a meeting that lacks focus. With your goal in mind, prepare and distribute an agenda with the objectives outlined to the participants of the meeting. Request them to read this in advance. This makes the most efficient use of time as they don’t have to skim through the agenda in the meeting itself and it also gives them a chance to think through and make their own individual preparations ahead of time. No facilitator and mote taker roles assigned. Without someone to lead the meeting and someone to take notes, the meeting can go in any direction and waste precious time. Learn how to delegate effectively and determine who’s going to be in charge of facilitating the meeting and who’s going to be taking notes prior to the meeting. Both of these individuals will be responsible for issuing the minutes of the meeting. Different participants can take on these roles in future meetings. No start and end times established. A meeting can go on for hours if you don’t set a fixed time for it to finish. Respect those who got to the table on time and start (even if others are late). Don’t start over when others arrive, and end the meeting on time. You’ll be surprised on how much you can accomplish in [...]



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