Course: Career Communication

Why Do Meetings Have a Bad Reputation?

Meetings dominate the way in which we do business today. In fact, approximately 11 million meetings occur in the U.S. each and every day.1 Although many of us complain about meetings, we can all expect to spend our careers deeply immersed in them. Most professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month2 and research indicates that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted.3Assuming each of these meetings is one hour long, professionals lose 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings, or approximately four work days. Considering these statistics, it's no surprise that meetings have such a bad reputation.

How Are Unproductive Meetings Affecting Us?

Most professionals who meet on a regular basis admit to daydreaming (91%), missing meetings (96%) or missing parts of meetings (95%). A large percentage (73%) say they have brought other work to meetings and 39% say they have dozed during meetings.4 One might be tempted to snicker at these statistics… but have you seriously considered how these inefficiencies affect you and your organization?

Some direct effects of unproductive meetings include:

- meetings are longer, less efficient and generate fewer results
- more meetings are needed to accomplish objectives
- with so much time spent in ineffective meetings, employees have less time to get their own work done
- ineffective meetings create frustration at all staff levels
- information generated in unproductive meetings usually isn't managed properly
- inefficient meetings cost organizations billions of dollars each year in otherwise productive employee work time

How Did the Situation Become So Serious?

Although there is a general consensus among professionals today that meetings could be more productive, very few seem willing to make a commitment to improve them. There are many reasons for this lack of commitment:

- most individuals have never experienced or witnessed the power of a truly effective meeting and, therefore, don't recognize the importance of having better meetings
- for many, it may seem more "convenient" to continue current meeting practices, regardless of how inefficient they may be
- many teams don't have access to the kind of effective meeting information they need to improve their meetings
- most employees feel there's hardly enough time in a day to complete basic tasks. Who has the time or energy to commit to improving meetings?
- managers, in general, fail to consider the negative impact meetings have on the organization's bottom line