Writing in Harvard Business Review, a consultant reported on a survey he conducted of top managers (CEOs, vice presidents, etc.) from 187 companies worldwide, each with stock values totalling at least $1 billion. Despite the focus on company leaders, the results mirrored the meeting problems most teams lower down suffer. "Our findings support what many executives have long suspected—namely, that they spend too much time discussing issues that have little or no direct impact on company value," Michael Mankins wrote. "Even worse, their meetings often fail to produce both the quality and quantity of decisions required to drive superior performance."
One reason was, "Agenda setting is unfocused or undisciplined." The agenda was the same from week to week, or priorities were set by the crisis of the moment. Since in most cases no one was managing agenda items, "the team often ran out of time before it could address key items." Thus decisions that really needed to be made at that level in the company were pushed down "to individuals ill equipped to deal with the problems' underlying complexity and poorly placed to see the larger ramifications of their decisions."
Because of the various problems Mankins found, teams did not spend as much time on strategy as you might expect: on average, only 15% of their total meeting time yearly. In one global financial services company, "top executives spent more time…selecting the company's holiday card than debating the bank's strategy for the entire continent of Africa (where they had made significant capital investment)." In addition, more than 65% of meetings weren't even called to make decisions, instead being used to share information or hold discussions. And when decisions were made, those decisions often didn't create any change, because people came away with different interpretations or consensus had not been built.
Mankins offers the advice below for top managers, gleaned from his review of how the best teams operated.
"Deal with operations separately from strategy." Dutch bank ABN AMRO had a board that "spent most of its time reviewing loans and discussing day-to-day operations." But when the bank faced major challenges early this decade, the board began setting aside separate meetings (one-third of their meeting hours) to discuss strategy alone. For a lower-level team, the equivalent would be to set aside one team meeting per month to only talk about long-term planning, process improvements, etc.
"Focus on decisions, not on discussions." The Cadbury Schweppes leadership team requires that all background materials for a meeting go out at least five days in advance. Mankins says this means "members can devote meeting time to making decisions on important issues rather than to having those issues explained in lengthy PowerPoint presentations."
"Measure the real value of every item on the agenda." The impact, financial or otherwise, of each agenda item should be considered.
"Get issues off the agenda as quickly as possible." The CEO of Cardinal Health asks of his team, "'When does this decision need to be made?' and then make(s) sure their timetable will enable them to reach a decision in time."
"Put real choices on the table." Mankins says "the most important requirement for…strategic decision making is to present viable options." The former head of British bank Lloyds TSB insisted that every strategic proposal include at least three alternative options. Mankins notes that the bank's market value increased 40 times in 18 years.
"Adopt common decision-making processes and standards." Mankins writes that "companies with superior decision-making capabilities use a common language, methodology, and set of standards for making decisions." At Barclays, each decision must be based on facts, chosen from among alternatives, and result in action.
"Make decisions stick." At the top levels, this means basing your resource allocations on your strategic decisions, so they have real consequence and gain importance among team members and their business units. It also means a version of the "Silence is consensus" rule. One such rule laid down by the CEO of Gillette was, "The team is free to debate any decision in staff meetings, but once a decision is reached, there is no more debate—no 'I don't agree with this…(in) hallway conversations.'" He also built team accountability by having team members rate each other and the team overall, and then partially tying compensation to those ratings.
[Editor's note: Obviously, these suggestions would be useful to any team that struggles with its meetings.]
Source: Mankins, M. (04), "Stop Wasting Valuable Time," Harvard Business Review, September: p. 58.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.