12 symptoms of Meeting-Mania
Meeting-Mania within the company may occur in many forms. In this article you will find the 12 most common symptoms, if you recognize one or more of them you may as well be affected!
1/ The number of meetings increases
The number of meetings per day and week is increasing over time, at first it was exhilarating but for some time it has been out of control, I cannot cope anymore …
I was invited to this meeting, I do not know why, but they consult me! Does it mean that my opinion is important?
2/ Meetings are getting longer
Last Thursday we were efficient, after 20 minutes everything had been decided, but the host kept on talking and we drifted on other topics and had a cup of coffee together.
I enjoyed spending time with my colleagues, but couldn’t we let people go once important decisions have been made?
3/ Finding a meeting room has become a struggle
The meeting rooms are always occupied and you have to book them a week in advance.
We are currently testing an application to optimize the booking since it’s become so complicated, but is this really the core of the matter?
4/ The diaries are only meetings
Our diaries are full of meetings from Monday 8am to Friday 6pm, you now need to set up a 3 people meeting 15 days in advance to.
We are never at our desks because we spend most of our time meeting. When will we get the real work done?
5/ Participants do something else during the meeting
As I have meetings all the time I have to find some time to handle the daily work and answer my e-mails. So I always take my laptop and my phone to be multi-task.
The other day a colleague was eating his sandwich during the meeting, he validated everything we said but did he really listen?
6/ We “reassure ourselves” with a lot of meetings
The other day I participated in a meeting that lasted 1 hour and we collectively decided on a totally unimportant matter .. I understood after that it was better to decide all together.
The organizer prefered gathering 7 people to get an “amen” instead of deciding alone .. Did this meeting take place at the expense of deep thinking?
7/ The agenda is non-existent
Sometimes the meeting is not prepared at all and we simply meet to talk about a topic. The talks are certainly very interesting but we do not understand where we are going.
The notion of purpose or agenda is totally absent. Why not explain before to people the reason they are gathered?
8/ We start and finish systematically late
The guests have a lot of trouble being on time, they always have good reasons: “we were looking for the room, we got caught in something else …” and then there are so many topics to deal with that we rarely get everything done!
Respecting the time of others is the first of the courtesies! Why not impose punctuality and designate a “timekeeper”?
9/ No post-meeting action plan
We decided a lot of things which represents a great step forward but it’s not really clear on “Who should do what and when?”
It’s obvious that at the next meeting nothing will have progressed .. Why don’t we make a todo-list?
10/ Some people do not open their mouths
We sometimes see people in meetings who do not say a word, they were invited “for info” to listen to what is said and to be kept informed.
The casting is obviously wrong, why inflict that upon them? Why not just send them the report?
11/ Speaking time is monopolized
Friday meeting with the manager is always the same ; on the scheduled time he talks for 50 minutes of soporific figures and we must fight to say a word for the remaining 10 minutes!
What if we tried letting everyone present speak, just to see. Why not organize a distribution of speaking time?
12/ It’s difficult to suggest any improvement
We often have lots of good ideas for doing better next time, but it’s hard to get things moving in a context where meeting has become a lifestyle.
You probably are not the only one thinking that, and you probably have the solution. Why not organize an evaluation of the meeting to collect feedback, a ROTI for example?
(à suivre !)
