Dustin Wax wrote a great article over at Stepcase Lifehack outlining the 5 alternatives to Time-Wasting meetings.

One of my main goals when working with organizations is to shorten both the duration and the frequency of their meetings. When I go into a company I usually find two constituencies of people that are struggling to work together:

1. The information caretakers - This grouping of workers includes anyone who is engaged in getting the daily work completed in a project. They are finishing deliverables, communicating with clients/vendors/bosses/employees, etc. and constantly re-negotiating the status of each deliverable under their purview. They are right on the pulse of the project. It is this group that knows of fire drills BEFORE they become an issue. They typically see problems and opportunities before others do.

2. The information seekers - These individuals are typically in management positions and are highly interested in all of the projects under their oversight. In most cases, they are not performing the majority of the “work” that it takes to get a project done. In my view, this is the hardest category to operate in. These individuals are commonly starved for relevant information and therefore they are in a consistent “seeking mode” for more information that will help them predict issues and deal with them.

Now that we know the players, let’s talk about them in the context of meetings. Meetings usually happen when an information seeker gets to a point that they are uncomfortable with their level of knowledge related to the projects they are overseeing. They may be getting phone calls from clients, the boss, or another stakeholder asking status.

These situations result in some of the most urgent and at the same time, wasteful meetings. I am sure that most people know what I am talking about…the “Monday Morning Meeting”, “Status Meeting” or the “Team Update”. By any name, these meetings are directly caused through a lack of communication.

These meetings are also very inefficient due to the format. If you have a team of 10 information caretakers and the information seeker needs to get de-briefed by each one, you will have a good number of people twiddling thier thumbs and wondering why they are being taken away from their work. Another typical reaction to such meetings from the information caretakers is a loss of respect of the information seekers. “They just don’t get it! We could be more efficient if we just didn’t have these meetings.” is commonly heard.

Here’s the bottom line: if everyone is working together in a trusted system for collaboration, the information seekers can be satisfied to the point that the need for these types of status meetings goes away. I try to take my clients from regular weekly meetings to regular weekly “huddles” that last no longer than 15-20 minutes. This length of time makes sense and does not waste time en mass when looking at it from a team context.

If you are truly living in a world of regular communication, huddles should be used for two items:

1. Any item that requires a “collective brain”. Solving problems, uncovering opportunities, dealing with one-off clients, etc.

2. The re-negotiation of deliverables as they deviate from the original plan.

All other updates and statuses should flow back to the information seekers through the normal course of daily operations when using a trusted online collaboration system to bridge the communication gap.

The next time you get roped into a meeting, try to identify where the information is lacking and shore it up throughout the week to negate the need for another meeting the following week. If you communicate enough, you can eventually be excused from such time-wasting meetings.