If you ask any knowledge worker what a typical day is like, there is a high probability that they will say that they have a lot of meetings. In fact, they may also say that they have too many meetings or that their meetings are not productive. The average amount of time that an executive spends in meetings is 23 hours a week and I suspect that number has increased since the pandemic when we’re meeting online more than ever. Is this time well spent? Are meetings helping us to be more productive, or less? What makes a meeting effective? We had an opportunity to explore these questions, and practical actions, with David Wojcik of the Mississauga Board of Trade.
David: Meetings can provide valuable time with your team members. It can also consume resources and cause disruptions in workflow. Avoiding unnecessary meetings, and making the meetings you have productive and timely is critical to your productivity. To help us with this conversation is Liza Provenzano. Liza is founder and CEO of Spark HR, a human resources firm that focuses on helping Canadian businesses to become more successful through the performance of aligned, capable, and engaged teams. Liza is an experienced HR professional, bringing 20 years of practical HR perspectives and insights to the solutions that Spark HR offers clients.
Welcome, Liza. 
Liza: Hi, David.
David: Well, Liza, you have touched on one of my pet peeves, and something I hold so near and dear, and so passionately. Because meetings, especially the ones that are unnecessary and people that are late, and just non-productive, it just makes me crazy that we have them. And since we’ve been in the COVID world, I don’t understand it, I mean, back to back with no transition time. I don’t know what the heck we are going to do when we go back to in-person meetings, if we actually have to allow for travel time. Or maybe we won’t do that. Anyways, let’s start with the meetings in today’s world. Do you find we are having more meetings? Are we cramming more in? Are we having unnecessary meetings?
Liza: Well, I think both of those things are true. David, I do hear that – from talking to the leaders that I work with, I am consistently hearing leaders comment on the number of meetings they are having, how that’s extending their day. They comment on the lack of transition time. It’s back to back to back to back. They talk about getting their actual job and thinking time, planning time done in the evenings. And they also comment, too, sometimes on being double booked, and just getting meeting invitations that are filling up their calendar. So definitely, there is this angst about time getting away from us, even more so than it did before. It’s a challenge.
David: It is a challenge. So let’s talk about – I mean meetings are value, people need to get together.
Liza: Agreed.
David: One of the CEOs that I was talking to said, I’m looking forward to getting everybody back in the office because, where I used to just be able to pop next door to somebody’s office, and we could have a discussion and solve an issue in five minutes, now I’m booking like a 30 minute Zoom call, and that is disruptive to the work flow. Now, on the other side of that, somebody could say, you know, well, popping in to disrupt somebody for five minutes or ten minutes, it’ll take them 20 minutes to get them back into the work flow anyway, so we do have those things. But are you hearing that from managers and CEOs and people in general, saying, yeah, we could pack a lot more into a day when we just were able to pop in next door to our colleagues?
Liza: I am hearing that, and I’m hearing that as one of the theories around why it seems like there are so many more meetings, because we could have those impromptu, informal discussions when we were in the same physical workplace, but now we have to take more steps to reach out and schedule that time. I think the opportunity that lies within the experience of our meeting overload is that it calls us to really step back and look at how are we spending our time? You know, to ask myself the question, do I need to attend this meeting? Do I need to call this meeting? Are really important questions. There might be other ways of getting the work done without actually needing a meeting.
David: And Liza, when we have these meetings that are scheduled, if you have a regular, weekly meeting, I wonder if sometimes feel, because we’ve scheduled the regular weekly meeting, if we don’t have it people will all of a sudden not showing up to them on a regular basis, so therefore we have to have the meeting no matter what, whether there is something to discuss or not. I don’t agree with that. I think if you don’t have anything to talk about, then cancel the meeting, give people time back. And another part, if we book the one hour meeting and we can get through it in 30 minutes or 35 minutes, give people back 25 minutes. Just because you book an hour, doesn’t mean you have to take an hour. How do you feel about those two items?
Liza: I agree with both of those items 100%, David. One of the biggest challenges with meetings is being very clear on what you want to accomplish. So when I’m calling a meeting, what is it that I want to get done in that period of time? What decision do I need to make? What’s the outcome that I want? I’m really then structuring the time and the meeting discussion around achieving that outcome. I mean, how many times have we left meetings and they haven’t felt that productive?
David: Right. Go ahead.
Liza: We would say a productive meeting is quite simply a meeting that we leave feeling it was mutually satisfactory. It was a good use of our time, and we walk away feeling all right. It’s that simple.
David: So for certain meetings, it’s probably a good idea to have an agenda so you let the other person know what you want to accomplish. But I also have to say when I’ve had conversations with CEOs and there is no particular agenda, it’s more of a catch up meeting to find out what they’re doing, and find out – and those meetings I find the to do list, by the time I finish those meetings, a lot of times, they are extremely valuable. So my question to you, how do you gauge that? I mean, do you always have to have an agenda? Do you let, sometime, it’s a little bit more loose, especially if it’s one on one? Maybe you should have an agenda if it’s more than one person, but if it’s a one on one, maybe it’s okay to have a little bit looser agenda.
Liza: Yeah, certainly some meetings are a little bit more informal, or more ad hoc. I think that’s fine. It depends on the context, depends on the topic, the relationship. What the constant is, whether it’s on paper as an agenda, or it is in my own mind, it’s the clarity. What’s the purpose of having this conversation? Even if I’m stopping by your office, David, for ten minutes, there’s a reason why. So what is that reason why I need to talk with you? And just being clear about that in my own mind, and then articulating that, with clarity, to you, to say this is what we need to talk about, can make that time that we spend so much more productive, and efficient, too.
David: So if somebody doesn’t have an agenda or something specific to talk to you about when they pass by your office, you just tell them, keep on moving. Don’t – big sign, don’t stop.
Liza: (laughing) You certainly can have a little chat and say hello and how are you doing, but in terms of getting work done, I think that’s where we really need to be clear.
David: I guess, when we were all in the office, way back a hundred years ago, it seems –
Liza: It seems.
David: When we all were in the office, I wonder how much time was wasted with those informal, unproductive meetings? Have you heard the opposite side, where people say, you know what, I like the way it is right now because when I’m not in the office and I’m working virtually, my work time is my work time, and my meeting time is my meeting time, and I’m more productive.
Liza: I do hear people saying they are more productive in a remote work environment. So that experience certainly is there, and I’ve seen that also proven out in some of the research that’s come out, both since the pandemic started, but even beforehand. That said, the risk of an unproductive meeting is there whether we’re in-person or whether I’m meeting with you through a Zoom videoconference. It goes back to, how do I choose to spend my limited amounts of time in the day?
David: You would think after hundreds of years of meetings we would have nailed this thing down, but apparently we haven’t done it yet. So a juicy topic, and we always talk for many, many, minutes on productive meetings.
We’ve been in conversation with Liza Provenzano. Liza is the CEO of Spark HR. Liza, thanks for being with us.
Liza: Thank you, David. It’s always a pleasure.
