Introducing the real key to fixing time-suck meetings

By: Stephen Garcia, EdD

In his letter to shareholders in JPMorgan’s latest Annual Report, Jamie Dimon said “internal meetings can be a giant waste of money” – and he’s right. Our response to Jamie and anyone else who feels this way, is to stop doing the same old thing.

Agendas, pre-reads, meeting software packages, even standing instead of sitting – these are useful process tools – but there’s a missing piece: how people behave and work with each other. Even a perfect process can’t transform unproductive meetings into productive ones unless the participants connect effectively with one another.

Now there’s a way to address the people challenges. The leaders of Contemporary Leadership Advisors built ConvoLens so that team leaders, project managers, facilitators, consultants, and coaches can see important communication patterns that are limiting meeting effectiveness. Once these patterns are visible, you can pinpoint specific opportunities to make those interactions more productive.

Get the big picture – and the important details

ConvoLens is an easy-to-use app based on behavioral analytics that can identify what the group needs to work on, and also which participants are modeling productive meeting behavior and which ones may be holding the group back. This gives you the intelligence you need to immediately begin improving the dynamics and value of your meetings. 

How valuable are good meetings?

Good meetings help participants to share ideas, coordinate actions, and make decisions. The best meetings go even further: They inspire us to pursue aspirational, stretch objectives and bring us closer together.

How big is the impact of meetings that don’t accomplish much?

The time wasted in unproductive meetings may be the greatest tax on organizational performance. According to the Harvard Business Review, U.S. Employees spend approximately a third of their time in meetings, yet senior leaders believe that more than half of all meetings are ineffective.[1]  And the impact of bad meetings doesn’t stop there – they also reduce employees’ engagement and even increase the chances they will choose to leave the company.

Getting from here to there

Moving from a culture of bad meetings to good meetings means getting participants to practice the right behaviors and minimize the wrong ones. In good meetings, all attendees participate, discussion is not dominated by one or two people, participants seek to understand each others’ perspective versus simply advocate their own point of view, and the tone of the conversation is positive and supportive, not negative and cynical.

So, if you’re ready to leverage the real key to fixing “time-suck” unproductive meetings, we’ve got an offer for you: Try ConvoLens for free.

Sign up for the free Beta trial today.

[1] Ron Carucci, “How to Fix the Most Soul Crushing Meetings,” Harvard Business Review, February 16, 2018.