Eli Mina - Article - Is a meeting really necessary?

ARTICLES, INSIGHTS & IDEAS
by Eli Mina

BACK TO "MAKING MEETINGS WORK" MENU

IS A MEETING REALLY NECESSARY?

By Eli Mina, M.Sc.

Force of habit causes leaders to schedule meetings even if they are not needed. Given the substantial cost of meetings (in money, time, effort, and human toll), organizations cannot afford to hold meetings without identifying a clear and compelling return on investment.

When you shop for groceries, buy a TV set, or open a savings account, you look for the best return on your investment. Why not do the same when you plan a meeting?

Face-to-face meetings are expensive. But rarely do planners and facilitators conduct a cost-benefit analysis, asking a few simple questions, like: What will the meeting cost? What benefits will it deliver? Will these benefits justify the costs?

If you don’t ask these questions and if you are too casual about your meetings, don’t be surprised if attendees become cynical and say things like: “The words 'productive' and 'meeting' are mutually exclusive” or “The best meeting is the one that gets cancelled”.

To conduct a cost-benefit analysis on a meeting, you need to:

Estimate the potential costs.

Estimate the potential benefits

Compare the costs to the benefits

Bargain for better results

Estimating the potential costs

A meeting has hard (monetary) costs and soft (non-monetary) costs. Its impacts can be felt in the immediate term and in the longer term. All of these costs and impacts should be considered when deciding whether to call a meeting. Keep in mind that adding up the costs should not be a numeric exercise only. It will be difficult to attach a numeric value to every cost item; so don’t get caught up in a numbers game.

The monetary costs of a meeting start with staff wages and continue with professional fees for meeting planners, facilitators, advisors and speakers. Add travel and incidental expenses, rental of meeting rooms and audio-visual aids, accommodation, catering; production of minutes and reports, and any follow-up work. When you’re done, you may find yourself astonished by the staggering monetary costs of a meeting.

But don’t stop there. Beyond the monetary costs, meetings have several soft (and less obvious) costs. Meetings disrupt personal lives and schedules and cause discomfort and inconvenience. If they are poorly run, they cause stress and anxiety. Participants may leave frustrated and de-moralized and their enthusiasm for subsequent work may vanish. Bad meetings may cause members to look for excuses to avoid them in the future or even leave the organization altogether. These are very high prices to pay for a meeting.

Identifying the potential benefits

Having added up the potential costs of a meeting, it is only logical to ask: What exactly are you buying with this investment? What specific benefits can you expect?

The potential benefits of a meeting may include ideas for increased revenues and better use of resources (people, time, money, computers, buildings). A successful meeting may lead to creative initiatives to advance your organization’s mandate. It may resolve costly and stress-producing disputes. It may boost morale and loyalty and may help you build cohesion and teamwork. It can empower and engage individuals in collective decision-making.

Doing the cost-benefit analysis

Having added the potential costs and benefits, you need to do your cost-benefit analysis. You can this on two levels:

Assessing the meeting as a whole.

Assessing each major agenda item

When assessing the meeting as a whole, you need to ask questions like these:

Is the return on investment for this meeting substantial?

Is the meeting truly worth holding?

Has everything been done to minimize waste and maximize the return on investment?

When assessing every major agenda item, ask questions like these:

Is this agenda item ripe for productive discussion and decision making?

Is this item worth spending time on?

How much time should be budgeted for it (proportionate to the expected return)?

Bargaining for Better Results

Having conducted your cost-benefit analysis on the meeting as a whole and on major agenda items, you will need to make a few decisions.

If you believe your return on investment is substantial, you are doing well. Go ahead and hold the meeting, but be disciplined about achieving your returns, and see whether you can improve on them.

On the other hand, if it is not clear how worthwhile the meeting is, you need to take corrective action. To illustrate your options, imagine standing in a store and being unsure whether the product you’re buying (the anticipated benefits of a meeting) is worth the listed price (the total cost of the meeting). What can you do?

1. Bargain the price down: Look for ways to “conserve your resources”: Save money by using less costly facilities and cutting down on the frills; Conserve time by reducing the overall time frame and allocating time carefully for major agenda items. Refuse to include items that are not ripe for discussion and decision-making. Invite only individuals who are essential for the meeting, and ask them to attend only the segments in which they can contribute. For example: Avoid the mistake of inviting consultants (who usually charge by the hour) for the full meeting. Invite them only to the portion of the meeting when their advice is needed, and invite them to speak when their scheduled time arrives.

2. Bargain for more value: Look for ways to increase your return on the same investment: Enhance the quality of discussions by researching the issues, producing quality documents, and pre-defining options for decision-making. Dedicate less time to housekeeping items (group them together in a “consent agenda” for speedy consideration). Allocate more time to substantive items. Use good planning to avoid the common phenomenon whereby 90% of the time is spent on the things that don’t make a difference.

3. Go to another store: If after steps 2 and 3, the benefits are still marginal, explore less costly methods than a face-to-face meeting to achieve the same (or better) results: Use consensus building by correspondence (e-mail, fax, `snail mail’), teleconferencing, videoconferencing or electronic meetings.

4. Cancel the purchase: If the potential benefits of the meeting are non-existent or marginal when compared to the costs, why not alleviate everyone’s suffering, cancel the meeting altogether, and invest your resources in something else?

PREVIOUS ARTICLE BACK TO "MAKING MEETINGS WORK" MENU NEXT ARTICLE

BACK TO MAIN ARTICLES MENU