How much time do you spend in meetings every week?
20 hours? 30? More?
Imagine if you could reduce that time by a third. You’d save hours every week. You’d save days every year.
Here are four simple steps to reduce your meetings by a third.
#1 Change your meetings’ titles to “Meeting to agree (insert purpose)”
- Every meeting is supposed to have a purpose. That’s the point of it
- And you’re more likely to achieve that purpose – quickly – if everyone knows upfront what it is
- So, decide your purpose upfront. A good tip: think ‘what OUTCOME do I want?’ In other words, what do I want to COME OUT at the end of this meeting? and then…
- … include this outcome in your meeting’s title
- That way, everyone’s first impression of the meeting is what it’s looking to achieve. Which helps ensure they’re all focused on achieving it
- For example, if you attend a meeting called “Meeting to agree our priorities for June”, everyone rocks-up, knowing why they’re there. But call it “latest update”, and nobody does. And nobody cares.
#2 Minimise your agenda
- Once we know the meeting’s purpose/outcome, only include agenda items that will help us achieve that outcome
- This might mean we only need 2-3 items. That’s fine
- Anything that helps with the outcome goes in. Anything that doesn’t is irrelevant – so goes out
#3 Minimise the duration
- Now we know the short agenda, ask ‘how quickly can we cover these agenda points?’ – and then schedule the meeting for that time
- So, if it can be done in ten minutes, schedule it for ten minutes
(BONUS HUGE TIME SAVING TIP: when you click “new meeting” in your calendar, it will automatically assume how long it’s going to last. For most people, that’s 30 or 60 minutes. So:
- Go into settings, and shorten this standard duration to, say, 20 minutes
- Doing this means that, every time you click “new meeting”, your calendar assumes it’s going to be shorter…
- …which, usually means it is shorter. This Tip alone could reduce your time spent in meetings by a third)
#4 Un-invite the people you don’t need
- The more people in a meeting, the harder and slower it is to get consensus
- So only invite people you need there
- That will be people who (1) can help make the decision, or (2) can give specialist advice to help make the decision, or (3) are there to learn by watching others
- Do not invite loads of people, thinking it will speed things up. It doesn’t. It just clogs things
VERY IMPORTANT – remember PALM
A simple way to remember these four points is the word PALM. This stands for:
- Purpose – the outcome of the meeting
- Agenda – keep it as short as possible
- Limit time – make it shorter than the usual 30/60 minutes
- Minimise attendees – no hangers-on
Imagine if everyone in your company always used PALM for every meeting… you’d save months of time.
All of which means…
Action Point
Use PALM to prepare for every one of your meetings. And ask your colleagues to do so too.