You probably have too many meetings in your calendar. A lot of those meetings are probably too long and meandering, or annoying or pointless. And you probably come out of each one feeling exhausted, irritated and wishing you could have just got on with your actual work.
We all know this frustration. And yet next week, we’ll do the exact same thing. Here’s a truth we need to acknowledge: this cycle will keep going on and on unless we make a change. The best way to make that change is by getting all the information up front. The way to do that? A meeting audit. Here’s how to do it.
Spend a week assessing all your usual meetings
Track how long they take and how you feel during them and afterwards. Are there any that you always dread? Ask other people in the meeting for their thoughts; what’s working for them and what’s not?
Calculate how much time is being dedicated to meetings
It’s well worth knowing exactly how many minutes and hours are dedicated to meetings each week. Also, track the timings of individual meetings. Is there one that only takes 15 minutes but is booked in for an hour? Is there one that always, always overruns?
Look through the guest lists
Are the right people in the room for every meeting? Is a colleague sitting in the same meeting week after week for no real reason?
Think about the purpose
Every meeting should have a purpose and an agenda. If there isn’t one, scrap it. If you can’t clearly define a meeting’s purpose, it probably needs a rethink. If it’s structureless and doesn’t have agreed-upon outcomes, it needs an agenda.
Consider other forms of collaboration
Not all meetings need to be meetings. Be honest about which meetings are genuinely best done as a collective chat and which could be better as a shared doc that everyone adds to, or an email, or a tool like Miro that creates boards everyone can contribute to as and when inspiration strikes.
Make a report
Note down all your findings from the week and suggest which meetings should be scrapped, which should be cut down, which need tweaks to their structure, and so on. If you’re a leader, go ahead and action your report! If not, present your recommendations to your manager, noting why you’ve conducted a meeting audit: to promote efficiency, tackle meeting overwhelm and make everyone work smarter.
