How to build a culture of productive meetings

Seni Sulyman and I spoke to dozens of African startup executives over the past few months, as we scouted for talent problems to help them solve. We decided to write about the themes we heard during these calls. We hope these articles would serve as refreshers or mini-guides that any manager or leader can share with a team member to help them get a high level understanding relatively quickly.

Who is this for?

Founders and CXOs looking to get their teams to consistently productive meetings.

The meeting “headache”

There is no shortage of guides about how to have better meetings. However, most employees still spend 50%+ of the work day in meetings, many of which — they say — feel unnecessary, too long or not on point.

So why don’t more companies have productive meetings?

Meeting guides tend to explain how to “do” meetings (the method). To get teams to consistently apply the method, you need to build a culture of productive meetings.

First, a recap of the “method” behind meetings?

A shared understanding of the answers to 4 questions is the foundation of productive meetings:

Read here about how to answer these questions for your company

Second and often overlooked, the “culture”

To change their meeting culture, high-performing teams we interacted with followed some version of the below:

Assess the current meeting productivity and desired end state

• Get facts right: what formats of meetings employees have (e.g. 1:1s, retreat) and how long they spend on them. This can be done by surveys or by mining calendars
• Get feelings right: how satisfied employees are about their meeting productivity, how much they want it changed, and what they think obstacles are. This can be done through a survey with a forced scale
• Crowd-source it: Desired productivity improvements and measures already taken by teams. Incentivize creativity through recognition or prizes.

This assessment will help prioritize the most useful changes to make to the culture and the realistic pace of culture change.

Define meeting method

Once the case for a new meeting culture is clear, you need to define the method: when to have meetings (versus other forms of collaboration), what formats of meeting to have for various meeting objectives, and what practices to adopt for effective and efficient meetings.
Your answers to the 4 questions above should align with the following:

• organizational culture: company culture eats meeting culture for lunch
• company strategy: if a meeting “method” choice is not essential to “win”, best to err on the non-restrictive side
• change elasticity: companies are human systems and there is a limit to the intensity of change they can take without breaking. Paying close attention to the cultural assessment above helps avoid overstretching

Define enablers & incentives

Depending on the assessed gap between current and target meeting, the motivators for staff, and change elasticity, the right enablers and incentive can be selected along the following categories:

• Modeling (e.g. does leadership model the behaviors of meeting culture?)
• Rewards (e.g. do individuals get celebrated for adhering to meeting culture?)
• Performance management (are good meeting habits rewarded as a competency in employee goals ?)
• Career progression (e.g. how does adherence to culture influence who gets promoted?)

Make the case for the new meeting culture

To increase chances of adopting a new culture, it is important to show to employees what is in it for them. Making the case could focus on:

• Emphasizing the extent of buy-in in the organization
• Showing the time they can reclaim back for work or leisure
• Reducing anxiety by communicating a gradual change with feedback and ongoing consultation

Prepare the required tools and processes

Prior to introducing a new meeting culture, it is important to decide on:

• Supporting tools to implement the culture (e.g. SaaS software that makes it easy to implement the new meeting culture)
• Information repository where individuals can find helpers and explanations about the new meeting culture
• Updated company processes and policies (e.g. performance assessments, new process for setting up meetings, etc.)

Introduce the meeting culture in cascade starting from the top

• Introduce in senior meetings: great opportunity for feedback, buy-in and ambassadorship and positioning culture change
• Introduce next in mid-management: audience closely attuned to senior leadership and with direct influence on the broader organization
• Expand to the broader company

Incentives that reward employees for adopting the meeting culture work better than those penalizing employees for not adopting the meeting culture.

In closing…

Achieving a productive meeting culture is a matter of method and culture. Getting culture right takes upfront leadership commitment but will benefit the business and your employee engagement. Implement carefully to only make changes at the pace that your company can absorb.