The Meeting Time Dilemma: Why We Can’t Get It Right & How to Fix It
“WHY WE CAN’T GET MEETINGS TO START AND END ON TIME?”
I contemplated this to myself the other day. With corporations asking their employees to be in the office more, this dilemma will only continue..
Is this a challenge you are also facing, or am I the only one?
In this article, I’ll reveal the root cause to why we have this meeting time dilemma and a potential solution to fix.
Meeting Time: The Problems
There could be many reasons why meetings don’t start and end on time. Let’s review of few of the obvious ones.
- No agenda: a meeting with no agenda is like a car with bad brakes. Your almost guaranteed to not stop when you need to.
- No goal: a meeting with no clear objective of why we need to be here and what problem are we looking to solve is a recipe for disaster.
- Too many people: the larger the invite list, the longer the meeting will take as communication channels increase.
- No facilitator or timekeeper: If everyone in the meeting is trying to be heard and no one is designated to keep track of time, the meeting will go off track.
- Get to the meeting wrap-up sooner: Many meetings overrun due to not getting to the conclusion of the meeting sooner, which ensures all are aligned and answers the questions… “did we get the outcome we were looking for, was the problem solved, what action items do we have, who owns them and what are our next steps?”. The wrap-up or conclusion of the meeting typically requires 3 to 7 minutes.
Root Cause Revealed
There is one problem not stated above that I think is the root cause of most meeting time drama.
Root Cause: Overlap between Start and End times
Let’s run through this brief example for further explanation.
- Review Meeting ends at 1 PM.
- Steering Committe starts at 1 PM.
In the above example we can see there is an overlap at 1 PM. Meeting participants in the Review meeting will end their meeting at 1 PM, as mentally they are thinking…
“We have this room reserved until 1 PM so we are not leaving this room until the tail-end of 1 PM.”
While participants for the Steering committee that starts at 1 PM are waiting outside the room angrily saying…
“We have this room booked starting at 1 PM, why are they still occupying the space?”
This issue clearly shows there is a bottleneck at 1 PM. Meeting participants for the Steering Committee will need to wait for the participants of the Review meeting to exit, then the Steering Committee participants have to dial in if there are Zoom participants, log into the system if there is presentation material, and get settled, which can delay the start of the meeting for many minutes. I have seen this issue throughout my career, which I think is a cultural problem, caused by the tools we use and our thinking of time.
How to Fix?
In order to fix this dilemma, there are 2 things that need to be corrected. The tools that we use and the mindset.
Tools: The tools we use plays a big part. When we reserve meetings in Outlook or other appointment applications, it usually provides meetings in 30 or 60-minute increments.
The solution is for meetings to end 5 minutes early in which the appointment booking tools would enforce.
This solution would provide buffer time and remove the bottleneck where meetings ends and starts at the same time. At a previous company I worked at, their wall clocks actually enforced this where there were no hour meetings only 55 minute meetings.
Mindset: The Agile Values states “People over Processes and Tools”. With this in mind, the change to the appointment tools mentioned above will only work if people’s mindset adapts and they respect the 5 minute adjustment change.
Let me know what other ideas you have to fix this meeting time dilemma.
If you enjoy this article, please follow me for more knowledge articles that I will be publishing on a weekly basis. Also, enjoy reading my other articles below.
All the best
Agile Bytes
