Tame the Meeting Beast

Meetings, meetings, meetings. Am I right? 

Sometimes it seems like our whole day as healthcare leaders is one solid meeting from 7:30 a.m. (or earlier) through late afternoon or beyond. Like the suburbs of [insert your favorite city here–Bay Area for me], these meetings can blend into and overlap each other without clear boundaries. This leads to feelings of being on “overdrive” all day long, frantic and harried, with no time to do other tasks or even use the restroom. 

Then in addition to a “second shift” of family duties at home, we may trudge through a “third shift” of catching up on work emails and tasks left over from the day. This often occurs after the kitchen is cleaned up and any relevant children are in bed…when we’re not at our best, energy flags, and precious time to recover for the next day is consumed.

Why is this happening? Of course, the pandemic shifted most of our meetings from “IRL” to virtual, which has lowered the bar to schedule a meeting. But do we also construct our days this way because it is how we show our colleagues we are engaged? Committed, busy, team players….and proving it by chaining ourselves to Microsoft Teams or another platform?

I believe we can reclaim our vital resources as healthcare leaders from meeting overload. First, we should restructure our schedules to create time to DO the work–instead of TALKING about doing the work. If we all gave each other permission to be off in the clinics or hospitals walking the walk of healthcare leadership, instead of talking about it, we would make a lot more progress. Converting one-third or half of our meetings to email would free up much-needed time to be present with our teams in person. (You know the concept–convert a meeting to an email, an email to a chat message, and a chat to….well, maybe we don't need to talk).

Second, passing periods between meetings should be built in and rigorously respected. Since it is so easy to blow past a 12:50 end time and continue chatting right up until 1:00, we should experiment with starting the passing period on the hour–so the meeting begins at 12:10 and runs until 1:00, with the next passing period until 1:10. 

Aside from these measures, another way to "tame the meeting beast" is to encourage each other to actively manage meetings. Here are a few ideas about what that could look like:

• The person calling the meeting should send out an agenda in advance, identifying the facilitator and sharing any key context or background. Attendees should feel empowered to decline meeting invites lacking an agenda or a clear purpose. Consider allotting time segments to each agenda point, as a shared understanding helps with time-checking later. The facilitator then reviews the agenda screen at the beginning of the meeting, making sure everyone knows the conversational roadmap. The agenda can also be pasted into the meeting chat function, for reference throughout. 

• The facilitator then takes a respectful but firm hand to guide the discussion through the key points, recognizing that like a good clinical visit, the meeting should follow an arc of beginning, middle, and wrap-up. It should not be a free-for-all discussion right up until the last moment, or beyond.

• The facilitator watches the time and uses thoughtful summarizing statements to move on to the next topic. If conversation runs wild, the facilitator can say, “Time check--we have ___ minutes until our end time of ___, and I want to make sure we get through the rest of our items.” If talk continues unabated, the facilitator respectfully acknowledges the importance of the point and moves along to the next one. 

• If a particular agenda item is poorly defined or likely to wander, the facilitator can frame it in advance, with “Let’s hear three sentences of background about ___.” Or “Can we have the ‘bottom line up front,’ and then a few sentences of context?”

• If conversation hurtles headlong into the last few minutes, the facilitator should confidently begin wrapping up with "Five minutes remaining," or “Let’s hear this last point and then move on to action items.” If there is clearly much more to discuss, it can be handled in a follow-up email or a second meeting. Not everything can be resolved within the meeting time, and acknowledging that reduces the wrap-up stress. 

Ideally, these techniques will allow for a high-yield meeting that concludes on time with a sense of closure and accomplishment, which should feel satisfying for the participants. And a day with fewer, tighter, more productive meetings, interspersed with ample time to do our real leadership jobs, should restore sanity and structure to the day.

To put this approach into practice, we should frankly admit how out of control our meeting culture has become and give each other permission to use these methods without fear of disapproval. And above all, we should always practice good meeting “manners” ourselves.

Happy meeting!

--Dr. Holly