“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.” – Henry Ford
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report Where’s The Boss?, CEOs are spending about one-third of their time in meetings. When the study calculated other tasks, such as email, lunches, phone calls, personal time, etc., CEOs averaged only around 6 hours of work a week.
There is a ripple effect with poor time management that can increase opportunity cost losses. An unnecessary meeting is not just time spent in a boardroom, it’s time NOT spent maintaining other aspects of the business. Email and phone calls build up and become harder to manage. Don’t think you’re immune to it: According to this University of Chicago professor, all businesses suffer from too many meetings and poorly designed ones.
Despite the fact that they are easy to poke fun at and blame for creating an unproductive environment, meetings are essential in sharing knowledge and communicating with your team.
So what can you do to make sure you are only spending your time in productive meetings and not time-eating ones? Ask yourself:
Who are you meeting?
One similar CEO study in Italy found that meetings within the company were more beneficial for the CEO than ones with outside firms. Obviously being treated to lunch or a golf outing is a little perk of C-suite life, but too much of a good thing can hurt performance.
Should you be in the meeting?
Simply put: If you trust your team, you probably don’t need to be in there. If you don’t trust your team, then you have larger issues than wasting time in conference rooms.
Your corporate structure could be eating into your time. The Wall Street Journal article noted that:
“In companies that incorporated a finance chief or operating chief into the corporate hierarchy, the CEOs’ time in meetings was reduced by about five-and-a-half hours a week, on average…”
Find places where you can better utilize your senior executives in meetings.
Is the meeting efficient?
Imagine what you could do with 20 uninterrupted minutes right now. Would you take time to think about all of the information that came across your desk today? Would you catch up on industry news? What about phone your husband or wife?
There is no law that says meetings have to be in 30-minute increments. Schedule meetings for forty minutes instead of one hour, or leave early when a meeting is no longer applicable to you. Ask that all meeting requests sent to you have an agenda and that areas pertinent to you be placed at the beginning, and don’t be afraid to excuse yourself when necessary. However, be sure to let the meeting planner know your intentions before you arrive.
Time is the common denominator among all persons in your company, but if senior level executives aren’t making the most of their time, the company as a whole suffers. Break the bad meeting habits and spend your newfound time investing in your company.
