Bad meetings create bad companies

By Ron Pelger, RonProCon - Member of FreshXperts

 There are only three things in life that are certain; death, taxes and meetings.

 Do you have ineffective meetings in your company?

When having phone conversations with some industry associates at times, it is clearly evident that they are in a hurry to rush into a meeting. They're usually breathing heavily, answering "yes" or "no" to questions that were never asked or grappling with papers while spurting out words that make no sense at all. Then when I call back at a later time, the vicious cycle starts all over again. You guessed it, another hectic meeting.

Approximately 11 million meetings take place in the U.S. alone every day. People lose almost four full days each month in unorganized meetings. A little over 90 percent of workers admit that they daydream in meetings, mostly because of the boring subject matter. Management people spend up to 50 percent of their time in meetings. Most admit that the time spent is wasted.

Everyone has a story about a horrible meeting. Here are two examples as told to me:

Retail Produce Director - "The worse meeting I ever remember attending lasted two hours. The first 30 minutes was a tongue-lashing from the president about how we should be carrying star fruit and fava beans in our stores. The following hour was devoted to a discussion all about our annual company golf tournament. Finally, the meeting ended right after a very brief summary of the poor sale results from the previous week. And we want to know what's wrong with our business?"

Sales & Marketing VP - "I was summoned into an emergency meeting with all other staff people. It sounded really important, but we were not told of the topic. After everyone showed up, each of us kept running back and forth to fetch certain material as a different subject came up. The meeting was an absolute disaster."

Meetings that are unproductive will generate very few results. The wasted time usually frustrates people at all levels and will wind up costing millions of dollars each year in labor.

Here is my suggestion for your next meeting to make it short and sweet:

Remove all the chairs from the meeting room. Make each person stand up and allow them two minutes to explain their department sales from the previous week. Nothing else should be discussed. The entire meeting will just take 15 minutes and will be very productive.

Not every meeting should be in session for that short of time. However, the topics and discussion time should always accomplish a quick conclusion. Then, everyone should get back to work.

Meetings are a normal part of our business, but should never be in mumbling, bumbling disarray. When the meeting ends, something must happen.

Someone once told me, "Show me a person who likes to attend meetings and I'll show you a person who doesn't have enough to do."

In this time sensitive produce industry; professional management people must make every meeting absolutely necessary and productive. You should track the cost of every meeting being held, especially those that are disorganized and unproductive. It may shock you as to how much time and money is wasted.

Out of control meetings are indications of confused companies. Simply put; bad meetings create bad companies.