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Save time: clearly define the purpose of the meeting


For the preciousness of time, senior executives don't need guidance; after all, they all know that time is money. However, Michael Mankins, a partner at management consulting firm marakonassociates, believes that many big companies don't really know how to arrange the time for the CEOs to be together. He said, "The attitude they treat with time is like that is a free resource."
His comments are based on a study of 187 companies worldwide by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which has a total market capitalization of at least $1 billion. But the results of this study are not very gratifying.
The top executives of the company spend an average of 21 hours a month, and the strategic time is less than three hours. About 80% of the time is occupied to discuss issues that are less than 20% related to the company's long-term value: operations, tactics, information sharing, and indiscriminate discussions.
Only 5% of respondents said that their company has a strict program that allows them to focus on things with high potential value. In general, the agenda of the meeting is basically to make up for the current crisis. One company even decides on the agenda based on who first mentions their favorite topics at the executive meeting.
As a result, the study found that emergency matters crowded out important issues. About 60% of executives say they often get diverted from other things before they reach consensus on important issues; 22% say that there is no time to mention key issues. . Only 12% believe that their executive meetings have been able to make decisions on important strategic issues; 53% have questions about such efficiency. Moreover, many agencies say that it is difficult for them to actually implement decisions because they do not know what consensus has been reached at the meeting.
Mr. Mankins said, “It’s amazing to spend only three hours a month discussing strategic issues, including mergers and acquisitions, even for those of us who already know that many companies are having difficulty organizing meetings effectively.” Nature can suggest a strong set of discipline constraints. First, who is responsible for strategic decisions, whoever is responsible for the agenda. Second, the agenda should be greatly streamlined. The top management team is responsible for the execution of the decision, and the matter that does not need to be decided is deleted. Mr. Mankins believes that many labor issues fall into this category, such as employee diversity and satisfaction. For decades, some people have been working hard to bring these issues to the board's agenda.
“If you look at the dialogue on labor issues, you will find that they are rarely related to decision-making, but basically related to information sharing. This can be solved by other means.” He said that it must be allocated according to the value of the company. Time to discuss these matters.
Finally, separate strategic and operational issues, and even arrange different meetings to discuss these two issues separately. The Dutch bank has done this. In the past, its board of directors met twice a week, each time taking three hours. Now, the board of directors runs a weekly meeting on operations; a full day of meetings a month to discuss strategic issues.
Other companies have come up with their own meeting skills. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, the Office of the CEO of Cadbury Schwitz will distribute the readings to the participants five days before the meeting, with questions about the agenda as a message, discussion or pending resolution. Note: The items that need to be resolved will be given priority, and the participating executives are encouraged to come up with other ways to deal with the secondary matters.
When Sir Brian Pitman served as Chairman and CEO of Lloyds Bank, he insisted on preparing several sets of options before the meeting decided to take a course of action. He said, "To have confidence in what you will accept, you must understand what you are rejecting." The findings of the Economist Intelligence Unit further confirm other research findings on the shortcomings of the conference. An annual survey conducted by WorldCom's communications company, mci, showed that in the 11 million conferences held every day in the United States in XX, the management of the conference thought that half of it was a waste of time. In the book "Strategy of the Conference", American lawyer George David Kiefer said that almost no one has learned how to make meetings effective in promoting thinking, motivating participants, and turning ideas into practical ones. He lamented, "Most professionals have not seriously thought about the impact of a futile meeting on their institutions."
However, there are also famous exceptions. Andy Grove, the former president and CEO of Intel chipmaker Intel, once gave all new employees a short lesson on how to meet. Moreover, all the meeting rooms have three questions on the wall: "Do you know the purpose of the meeting? Do you have an agenda for the meeting? Do you know your role in the meeting?"

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