What led me to read this McKinsey article above was because I spoke with an acquaintance, Greg, last week, who told me he had been appointed “Chief of Staff” earlier this year. While I congratulated him, I immediately thought about the role as it relates to government. Why would a private company need a Chief of Staff? I wondered ( this is an unusual title in the private sector, and no doubt, of the many business books I’ve read, I have hardly seen the title “chief of staff “mentioned).
I went on to satisfy my curiosity by asking him to clarify his role as Chief of Staff. This new role is in addition to his everyday role as Director of IT Professional Services with a well-known software distributor in Montreal. Impressive! I quickly realized that his company had noticed a massive problem with meetings and wanted him to help solve that problem. They had endless meetings, yet there was little to show for it. McKinsey’s article came in handy as I had started researching the issue of meeting productivity. I also found out that Brian Rumao is the Chief of Staff to LinkedIn’s CEO. Wonder what he does every day? Read about his role.
Meetings are a company “fixture.” The quintessential sign that people are “busy” and that things are being done. Be it the flattest or the tallest organization, and you are sure to see two or more people somewhere, meeting in person or virtually.
Organizations solve problems by making decisions and taking action. Meetings are the main forum for decision making, what Mckinsey calls “the lifeblood of organizations” (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019).
According to the same McKinsey article, 61 percent of business leaders acknowledge that they spend up to half of their time making decisions. As many as 6-7 working hours in meetings, sometimes even more, yet feel that the activity is unproductive. Not surprising to me, given that through my experience and observation, only a small number of meetings produce results that one could consider productive. Just 37 percent of respondents in this McKinsey’s recent survey said their organizations’ decisions were both high-quality and timely (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019). That doesn’t sound very encouraging.
Viewed from this angle, it seems evident that removing unnecessary meetings from the agenda could bolster a business manager’s productivity. Leadership capacity is a finite resource and should be treated as seriously as financial capital (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019).
How, therefore, do we render meetings more productive? By asking the following simple but powerful questions (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019):
1) Should we be meeting at all?
2) What is the meeting for?
3) What is everyone’s role?
The issue is not as simple as just striking out what we consider to be “unnecessary meetings.”
- Business leaders need to ensure that meetings are necessary and that there is clarity for those around the table regarding decision rights. When decision rights are unclear, meetings tend to be wide-ranging discussions with no decision. When there is a general lack of accountability among executives, they will lack the psychological reassurance to take interpersonal risks for fear of making the “wrong” decision.
Someone should have the responsibility to ensure that meetings in general, and leadership meetings in particular, had clear, non-overlapping purposes. This is where a chief of staff comes in.
To make meetings more productive, organizations need to dedicate effort to spotting meeting problems. Someone should have the responsibility to ensure that meetings in general, and leadership meetings, in particular, had clear, non-overlapping purposes. This is where a chief of staff comes in.
- Leaders need to delegate decision making. “Delegating a decision to someone doesn’t mean that the person can’t still consult others for guidance. It just probably doesn’t require an entire committee to do so” (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019).
- Even when the goals of a meeting are clear, and decisions are made, it doesn’t mean people are committed to it. Making people feel a stake in the outcome is the main broader challenge
Institutionalizing the principle of “disagree and commit,” articulated by Jeff Bezos in his 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders would enable action to be taken after a decision, even when people disagree.
For meetings to be productive, there should be accountability. Lack of accountability can negatively impact an organization, especially in this era where speed and agility are a competitive advantage (Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2019).
Interestingly, I found that there is a name for those colleagues who have no role in the decision-making process, but want to be “kept in the loop”. MEETING TOURISTS. Well, McKinsey recommends that they “shouldn’t be in today’s meeting“. They could be informed through other means, such as memos or town halls, to communicate decisions to relevant stakeholders.
Meeting tourists “shouldn’t be in today’s meeting”
Because of the way some companies are structured, the internal dynamics, culture, and politics may inhibit sweeping changes to meeting occurrences and outcomes. However, as with many transformational changes, it all starts with leadership’s commitment to do something differently.
