Want to Make Your Meetings More Efficient? Implement These 4 Strategies!

You’ve likely heard the phrase more than once: “This meeting could’ve been an email.” With managers attending an estimated 260 one-on-one meetings annually—excluding numerous team and cross-departmental gatherings—it’s worth questioning whether all these meetings truly benefit your teams and contribute to achieving goals. Are they genuinely serving their purpose?

A recent study from Miro found that more than a quarter of workers said they had too many meetings. The majority said they also attended meetings during their off-hours without pay. More than half likewise said they had to skip meals to attend meetings, and more than 20% said they had cried in meetings.

Another less recent report from Harvard Business Review said approximately 70% of all meetings keep employees from completing other work, and more than 90% of employees found their workplace meetings costly and unproductive.

Given all the above and when, according to a new report from Top Workplaces, nearly 70% of managers have “heavy” workloads, it’s time to rethink your workplace strategies and time management.

If your calendar is flooded with meetings, leaving you little time for actual work, here are four effective strategies to help you streamline meetings, improve efficiency, maintain productivity, and avoid exhaustion.

Strategy 1: Utilize Technology for Greater Efficiency

With a plethora of workplace technology tools available, there’s no need to endlessly email colleagues to coordinate meeting times. In fact, some meetings might not need to be scheduled at all.

Leverage digital tools to streamline meeting scheduling and reduce your overall time spent in meetings. Scheduling tools like Doodle and Calendly can streamline the scheduling process. Then, for inquiries and delegation that don’t require a full-on meeting, use platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams to automatically connect with your colleagues. There’s no need to even write up an email.

Integrating these technologies can save time and minimize unnecessary face-to-face interactions, yielding clear benefits. According to the Harvard Business Review report, reducing meetings by 40% led to a 71% increase in employee productivity!

Strategy 2: Implement Structured Agendas

Don’t just show up to the meeting without a plan. An agenda can help your teams reach the point faster, so you don’t spend valuable time on small talk. Prepare an agenda in advance (or delegate this task to another team member) and distribute it ahead of time, giving all parties a chance to prepare their thoughts and any questions or necessary materials. Then, follow that agenda and, for greater efficiency, set time limits on each agenda item to keep things moving.

The result? Your meetings will become shorter and more productive.

Strategy 3: Encourage Alternative Communication Methods

It’s true. Some meetings really can be emails. Before scheduling a meeting, think: Could this information be conveyed differently?

If you’ll be doing most of the talking in a meeting, consider sending an email instead. Your team can read the information at their convenience.

If you’re thinking of scheduling a meeting to ask a colleague a series of questions or get updates on a series of projects, consider using instant messaging for quick responses.

Asynchronous communication can also be handy, allowing team members to provide information at their convenience. Project management software, for example, can allow your teams to provide updates on projects as they’re available without ever scheduling a meeting or sending an email. Then, when you need those updates, all you have to do is access the software at your leisure, and all the information is at your fingertips.

Strategy 4: Set Boundaries and Delegate

You don’t need to attend every single meeting. Consider setting boundaries around your availability and delegating attending some meetings to trusted team members. For example, another team member could attend a client meeting. Then, they could report back to you with any notes after the fact — again, asynchronously or via email, negating your need to attend meetings.

You might also set aside blocks of time on your calendar that you will not accept any meetings, allowing you to focus on uninterrupted deep work. Maybe you don’t have any meetings on Mondays or Fridays.

Additionally, if you must attend a meeting, reduce the number of attendees as much as possible.

As Kurt Kim, Arootah COO, said, “One challenge I frequently observe is over-inclusion [in meetings] — inviting too many people, which stifles decision-making and reduces accountability. To counter this, limit attendees to essential decision-makers and subject-matter experts, and delegate detailed follow-ups to smaller breakout groups.”

Additional Strategies

While the above four strategies will help you significantly reduce your time spent in meetings, consider investing in executive coaching and leadership development training to help you fine-tune your leadership skills, including some of the skills discussed above, like delegation and boundary setting.

The Bottom Line

Assessing meeting necessity, utilizing technology, implementing structured agendas, encouraging alternative communication, and setting boundaries can help you manage meeting overload, thereby maintaining your productivity and preventing exhaustion.

Get started creating a more efficient and less stressful work environment today. Arootah’s executive coaching services can help. Learn more and schedule your free discovery call now.