For the sheer volume of merchandise, memes, and perhaps passive aggressive protesting we do everyday against the meaningless meeting, it’s kind of shocking how frequently they still happen. Perhaps no one has figured out a way out of these meetings—a force of habit?—once and for all until the practice of measuring meetings in cash came about. That is, in a recent article on Quartz, Gabriela Riccardi suggests, using Shopify as an example, that if you measure your meetings in a monetary amount, you’ll be less likely to hold them as frequently. This way, the meetings that do happen will be perceived as more precious, and time will inevitably used more cautiously.
Indeed, earlier this week, Shopify made headlines by announcing that they have implemented a new tool to their everyday workflows: a meeting cost calculator.
This tool attaches to work calendars to calculate, based on the amount of employees in attendance, how much money per person a meeting of even 30 minutes or less would cost the organization. And from its reception online, it seems it’s only a matter of time before this practice becomes a rule of thumb for executives and managers everywhere.
So, how does this work, and how can you start measuring meetings in order to make them more meaningful and thoughtfully done?
Why You Should Measure Your Meetings
Especially in the wake of the pandemic and the rise of remote, async work, communication has been a hot-button topic. And sure, Zoom meetings are great in that you can have a meeting with folks who are all across the world and in different time zones than you. But, of course, just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
By assigning a monetary value to each meeting, as Shopify suggests, we can better understand how company resources are being used. A meeting with most of the discussion focused between board or C-suite members with other team members quietly listening, for example, can cost an organization hundreds to thousands of salaries in just an hour or so.
By attaching a numeric value, then, to each meeting request, this approach allows meeting leaders to see more tangibly how they are using—or misusing—the resources within the company.
But this perhaps less mindful approach to meetings is not just a one-way street. Workers, of course, have to also engage meaningfully with meeting invitations. And this is where you as a leader have to step in.
After all, employees, especially those with less power and hierarchy within an organization, will inevitably feel obligated to accept every meeting invitation, regardless of how relevant the meeting content may be to them. So, it’s your job to oversee all meetings and determine which are unnecessary and which employees should indeed attend.
As well, it’s your responsibility to make sure employees feel empowered to reject meeting requests as they see fit, especially if you’re not there to do so on their behalf. Here are some steps you can take to start implementing this more meaningful approach to meetings.
How to Make Your Meetings More Meaningful
1. Set measurable objectives and actionable tasks
Before sending out a meeting invite—and before others do so, as well—establish the main objectives you want done.
This might mean writing and sending out a meeting agenda ahead of time, so everyone invited knows what they can expect from the meeting. Otherwise, it might even look like just emailing jot notes on what key points you want to hit and what tasks you want to discuss getting done.
But make sure to be as specific as possible. Include deadlines, whom you want to take each project or task, and who will be in charge of overseeing each task/project to ensure they are done adequately and on-time.
2. Limit attendees and reject meetings unapologetically
Including others in discussion is important and, in fact, can be crucial for preventing miscommunication on projects and workflows. But there is a finite amount of meetings one can be included in before their full-time position becomes Zoom attendee.
Instead of including everyone in the department, assign representatives from each department and ask one person to take detailed minutes of the meeting.
Then, share these minutes with the rest of the team, so everyone can catch up with the meeting on their own time.
And if you’re not the one who is constantly proposing these meetings, use your agency to reject (and encourage your employees to do so, too) these invitations. (The “decline” button is there for a reason!)
This brings us to our next tip: blocking off your day to limit invitations before they arrive in your inbox.
3. Block off your day and stick to it
That is, time block your day in your work calendar. Set times for answering emails, taking a lunch break, and finishing projects with hard deadlines. And, of course, stick to these plans, even if pressing the “decline” button makes you feel a bit guilty.
The good news is that putting these plans in your calendar will show team members ahead of time that you’re already busy without having to click “decline” on every team meeting request that pops into your inbox.
And with the above mentioned, by no means does this mean that you can’t have a casual stand-up session or asynchronous chat going between team members. It just means that you and other staff members are using these alternative methods of communication before jumping to a department-wide Zoom call that will inevitably take far longer than it should have.
Conclusion
In order to return value to meetings, as Gabriela Riccardi suggests on the Quartz blog page, you should start to measure your meetings in their monetary value. This way, all employees and C-suite members alike will begin to treat meetings as they should be: as precious, limited time taken out of numerous team members’ days. Doing so will encourage a more mindful approach to meeting planning and execution. And, most importantly, this approach will make people think first before calling a meeting that could, in fact, be an email.
