Get your meetings under control - John Cassar White

Middle managers spend up to 35 per cent of their time in meetings, while for senior managers, this goes up to 50 per cent. The way meetings are conducted reveals so much about the organisational behaviour of a company. Sadly for many companies, this behaviour borders on the toxic.

Working from home has not surprisingly made meetings more frequent, with a Harvard Business Review survey finding that in 2020 managers spent 13 per cent more time in online meetings. Years of attending and chairing meetings have helped me identify the elements that lead to unproductive meetings and wasted time. So can one get a grip on meetings to make them less tedious and frustrating?

The number-one cause of bad meetings is often poor preparation ahead of a meeting. Bulky meeting documents with information overload are frequently sent to participants too late for any meaningful analysis. PowerPoint presentations are now an integral element of most meetings. Some presenters use too many slides with excessive granular detail to show off and market themselves to their bosses. They certainly do not help participants understand the issue under discussion and take the right decisions.

But the bad manners...