What: McKinsey proposes a few solutions to the meeting obesity in organizations and reviews how to save time while at the same time be more efficient

Why it is important:  Leaders need to fight time waste by making the most of each and every tool at their disposal. Each of them has a specific purpose and should not be used as a fit-for-all solution.

McKinsey tackles the never-ending issue of time management and meeting fatigue (be them offline and online). In response, organizations are becoming more complex, without improving the decision-making process. As a potential solution, McKinsey propose to tackle the topic by identifying and focusing instead on the 3 types of collaborations usually taking place during team meetings:

-    Decision making: for complex or uncertain decisions, meetings with clear dispatch of accountability and roles. Cross-cutting routine decisions can be achieved via videoconferences.

-    Finding collectively creative solutions and implementing coordination: innovative sessions do have to take place physically, while routing working sessions can be taken digitally during short sessions.

-    Information sharing: if it is one way, a memo, mail or podcast will do the job. If it is two way (for instance, requiring a Q&A session), then an in-person meeting is better.

McKinsey observes that companies are increasingly shortening the meetings durations, to 30 or even 15 minutes, only based on the decision-making process, provided that all the needed information has been shared in advance.

Also, they encourage leaders to constantly ask themselves the reason why they have to attend any  meeting, their role and their possibilities to impact the outcome or not. If their presence is not essential, they are encouraged to excuse themselves and get a quick update afterwards. If the leader is not essential in the meeting, McKinsey is confident that the meeting will be successful without this person.

If we are all so busy, why isn’t anything getting done?