This MEETING Could Have Been An EMAIL!!!

Have you ever been in a meeting or on a conference call and thought, "what a complete waste of time..."  Yeah, me too...

Somewhere, right now, a conference call is taking place that should not exist. Twenty-three people have stopped what they were doing. Three are paying attention. Seven are checking email. Five are wondering why they're there. Four are on mute walking their dog. Two are pretending their camera is broken. And one person is sharing a spreadsheet nobody can read.

Welcome to the modern meeting.

Join Dave for some PRODUCTIVE talk about WASTED TIME:

• How Did We Get Here?
• Ten Reasons Most Meetings Are a Waste of Time
• Five Reasons We Know They're Inefficient But Keep Having Them
• Five Personality Types That Love Meetings
• Better Alternatives
• Technology Is About To Change Everything

Time is the only resource that cannot be replenished and every unnecessary meeting takes a piece of someone's life they'll never get back.

Meet when you must. Decide quickly. Invite fewer people. Leave with action.

And remember:

• The goal of work is not to attend meetings.
• The goal of meetings is to make work better.
• If they aren't doing that, stop calling them meetings.

Call them what they are: A group project that nobody wanted.

Giddyup!!!

Email David@Otalks.com or OWD@Otalks.com for comments, questions, or ideas for content on an upcoming O'talkin' with Dave podcast.  Otalks.com

Check out OtalksOfficial on Instagram and TikTok

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to O'Talkin' with Dave. Coming to you from his palatial fortress in Sin City, where what happens in Vegas is talked about everywhere. Put your hands together for the pastor of positivity whose glass is always at least half full. Here's Dave.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hey, how are we doing out there? I hope you're doing great. I am top shelf and ready to go. You know, sometimes when I do these O talks, I don't know if it's going to hit or not. I don't know if you're going to agree with me. You throw stuff at me. That's kind of my that's my life in general. Most of the time it's pretty good. But I know there's going to be applause and standing ovations at this one. You're going to love it because you're going to agree. And that the the title of it is This Meeting Could Have Been An Email. We've all been there before. And you know what I'm talking about. The greatest productivity theft in modern history is around meetings or conference calls that are completely unnecessary, unproductive, a waste of time. Somebody help me. Can I get a witness? I mean, think about it. You got 23 people have stopped what they're doing, completely stopped what they're doing. Three are paying attention. Seven are checking emails live. Five are wondering why did I even get invited to this? Four, they're at home on mute, walking their dog. Two are pretending their camera's broken when they're probably eating or worse. And one person sharing a spreadsheet and talking. Nobody can read the spreadsheet. It looks like a barcode. Welcome to what we've come to. The modern day meeting or conference call. The largest gathering of people doing nothing together on repeat. How did we get here? How did we get here? Now I've managed a lot of people. I've been on a lot of conference calls. I've been in a ton of meetings. I have flown across the country for a two-hour meeting and flown back. Yeah. It's crazy. Meetings were originally designed to problem solve, to brainstorm, maybe come up with a next great product or marketing campaign. Let's solve some problems. Let's progress. A few people would gather, discuss an issue, make a decision, and then go back to work. That's not what we got today. Sounds simple, right? But somewhere along the way, meetings evolved from being productive to being punitive. Many times meetings exist to discuss work instead of doing work. Now, I I remember the day when they would be very productive. You'd have cross-functional teams, we'd get together, we would hash it out and come out with a good product. Somewhere along the way, I mean, we have meetings to prepare for meetings so we can discuss what happened in the last meeting before we schedule the next meeting. It's like digging a hole, climbing out of it, and congratulating yourself for your excavation skills. Many organizations suffer from meeting inflation, which turns into scope creep, which turns into just routine habitual gatherings. Like monetary inflation, the more meetings you print, the less value each one has. Calendar gets full. The work, the actual work gets delayed. Everyone now they're busier because they got to make up for that time, but nothing gets done. And statistics back this up. Studies have consistently shown that professionals spend fifteen to thirty hours a week. Now that's okay. That's that's a gap, fifteen to thirty a week in meetings, depending on their role and responsibilities and all that. Managers often spend more than half of their working lives in meetings or conference calls. Think about that. Think about that. Not doing the work, talking about doing the work. Research shows that a large percentage of attendees believe meetings are completely unnecessary, and millions of hours are spent every year discussing it instead of doing it. And it meaning the work. Imagine hiring ten construction workers and then asking them to spend half the day talking about building. You do all that ahead of time. You get it done. Execution is the key. Eventually somebody's got to pick up a freaking hammer. A lot of people get it. Elon Musk, excessive meetings are the blight of big companies. And the bigger the company, the more the meetings. If the meeting starts with, let's wait for a few more people, it should probably be canceled. I said that one. I've said that many times. So why do we do it? Why do we do it? Let's let's get to just proof why most meetings or conference calls are a complete waste of time. And some of these will ring a bell to you, but it's also the purple car with if you're involved in this, it's a waste of time. If the invitation to the meeting says team alignment discussion about what? Nobody knows. Nobody knows why you have their meeting. You're just going to get together and discuss it. Even the organizer is not entirely sure. Okay, so number two, no agenda. Hopefully, we've solved this by now, but so many times the meeting begins with. So, what should we talk about? Congratulations, you've gathered twelve adults to invent a reason to be there. No agenda. You should always have an agenda. How do you know when you're finished? Number three, too many people. If twenty people are invited, eighteen aren't needed. If everyone must attend, then no there's no real accountability. There's gonna be too many opinions. If it's an announcement, that's not a meeting. It's not a meeting. Another one, information sharing disguised as a discussion. Someone reads slides out loud. Death by PowerPoint. The same slides everyone could have read on their own in three minutes. It's it's basically story time for adults. You sit in a circle and someone reads to you. Number five, no decisions. No decisions are made. An hour passes and everybody agrees that something should happen. Nothing happens. Also, back to the no agenda. Please. Meeting accomplished. Okay. Things are bad. You're dismissed. An hour later. And then just the sheer repetition. The same issues discussed last week, returned this week. It's like leftovers nobody wanted. Nobody ate any of these the first time. So here, here's the same plate of food. Reminds me when I didn't eat my dinner. Mom sometimes would feed me that for breakfast. Very mean. Also another unnecessary meeting. Status updates. People take turns reporting what they're doing. It's essentially kindergarten show and tell, but they're getting paid for it. I know I was a part of a company one time that we I'm on the West Coast. There were 8 a.m. meetings for an hour and a half where everybody would say what they had going on. It's 5 a.m. my time. 5 to 6 30 in the morning. Listen to people I barely know doing things that don't pertain to me. Status updates. And then the another reason is the old uh shuffleboard of the loudest person wins. The person who talks the most is mistaken for the person who knows the most. Oh no, no, no. And they're not always the same person. You know, the person who says the least but says it concisely at the end, okay, just let that person say that and save us all a lot of time. People want that sound bite. Oh, give me that soundbite. I'm gonna say something clever. If I talk enough, something clever has to come out. And then, you know, technology makes it easier. Remote meetings, that's eliminated travel, that's saving money. Unfortunately, it also eliminated excuses. Now meetings appear on calendars just like rabbits reproducing. At one point, it got to the point I didn't even have control of my calendar because someone could book meetings for me. As if I don't have a job to do. I mean, I how many sales meetings have I been in that took time away from sales, and the purpose of the meeting was to talk about why sales weren't higher. Because we're meeting 30 hours a week. And then finally, nobody calculates the cost. You got 10 people for one hour, average compensation, I don't know, you probably from CEO to whoever, probably we'll just say 50 bucks an hour, which is low, trust me. That's $500 just in salary. And nobody noticed. Plus the opportunity cost. So it's I could I could go different scenarios and talk for I could waste your time for an hour talking about wasting time and what a waste meetings and conference calls are. Anybody agree with me? I know you do. You you may be you may be fighting this daily now. And five reasons we think they're inefficient, but keep having them. We know it. This makes sense. If you talk to the manager, you talk to the people scheduling them, they would say, I know, but why do we keep doing it? I think one reason is because it it feels like work. Talking about progress creates the illusion of progress. Activity kind of feels like productivity. I don't know. Feels like work. Another one is managers want visibility. Some leaders confuse being seen with working. If I if I am seen doing work activities, then I'm managing the work. Oh, as the pastor of productivity, I say nay-nay. But managers want that visibility, they want that FaceTime, they want that screen time to talk about your numbers. And a lot of it reason is nobody wants responsibility. A group decision spreads accountability. Like peanut butter. It's like, well, we all decided. Well, we all agreed. Well, imagine the meetings on the bridge of that Titanic after you hit the iceberg. Well, we said we were unsinkable. Yeah. A lot of it is just tradition, too. We've always had this meeting. Every Monday at this time, or every Friday at this time. Probably the most expensive words in business. We've always done it this way. And then the last one I'll share as to why we do it. I think it's just fear. People worry that if you stop meeting, you'll lose control. Ironically, you've already lost it. Everybody knows how to work the mute button. When they didn't answer quickly, it wasn't because they were on mute. It's because they either didn't know or they weren't paying attention. So who has these? Are there certain personality types that demands these types of meetings? And I say yes. I mean, you've got the attention getter. He's got the audience. Nobody had to buy tickets. And he can demand, he can demand that they attend. Got the audience. He needs the attention. Also, there's a the professional commenter loves these meetings. They have a thought on everything. They're a bit of a know-it-all, but they really don't have any answers. They just have thoughts on things. They don't like, they don't necessarily have a better way, but they don't like your way because of something that happened in the past. And you got that historian that can quote chapter and verse on everything that happened at this company. And we spend time being unproductive talking about it. Then you got the status person. They need that, they seek status. They believe being invited equals importance. Ooh, who's on the distribution list? Ooh, who's copied? Who's required versus optional?

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

The micromanager. Oh, this word gets overused, but still, it's real. It needs hourly updates. Yeah. What's your heart rate? Are you still breathing? What'd you have for dinner? Gimme, gimme, gimme. And then you've got that meeting host that their calendar is more important than their productivity. Their calendar's their kingdom. Attendance is mandatory. And it's just crazy because there's so many logical alternatives. Yeah? Just one page update. You can read it in five minutes. And you know, here's the update. Here's what we here's where we are with this. If you have any questions, let me know. Send it to them in an email. If they have questions, they'll ask. If they don't, they won't. I know the fear is they won't read it. Well, then they're accountable. One-page updates. Love them. Or a video message. I know back in the day we had a voicemail, but just a quick video. Anybody can do a video now. You record it once and they can watch it anytime they want when they have a spare moment. Maybe you record a video, put it in an email, and say, hey, watch this by Friday at noon. Let me know if you have any questions. You can send that to a million people if you want. There's a lot. I've seen a lot with shared dashboards. You look on it and it has uh, you know, maybe some KBIs or whatever on there. There's the update. You can look at it anytime you want, and it's active. It's live. It shows sales and margin and projections and rankings and yeah. It's great. Real-time visibility. No conference call required. Yep. Then there's there's just different documentation like decision documents. You define the problem, you recommend a solution, and then the group can approve or reject. Thumbs up, thumbs down, what do you think? Done. There you go. Or you can have smaller problem solving sessions or brainstorming sessions. Instead of putting 23 people in a room, have lunch with three. Talk about it. 30 minutes, one decision. We're going to come down to the top three and then bring it to the group. Or we're going to come down with what we decide they can represent you. Now we're talking. Now we're getting it done without wasting everyone's time. The thing is, technology is about to change everything. I mean, working from home, we were doing it before COVID, but COVID showed a lot of things about what is necessary and saving money and time. And, you know, some people are more productive in that environment, some aren't. But we technology is helping us. AI, project management software, automated reporting, dashboards, I love them. You know, being able to transcribe everything I'm saying right now is being transcribed automatically. In digital collaboration tools, they're eliminating the need for so many routine meetings. Information can move without people moving. Updates can happen automatically. Decisions can be documented instantly. In the future, there's not going to be fewer conversations, but there will be fewer unnecessary conversations. And that's what scares some people. And I can see why. Because for certain individuals, meetings are where they build their influence one way or the other. And it's not about creating value, it's because they occupy space. And technology exposes the difference between activity and accomplishment. Absolutely exposes that. And that's really uncomfortable for some people. And if the primary skill is attendance, then I would be worried too. I would definitely be worried. Before scheduling the next meeting, though, think about it. Just the real question should be what decision needs to be made? Who actually needs to be involved? Can it be handled another way? And if the answer is yes, cancel the meeting. Your team, trust me, your team will not be angry. That cancellation email is glorious. And you may they may even nominate you for something. It's crazy how we got to this point. I don't think we'll stay here. Will we still have unnecessary meetings? Yes. Yes. And by meetings, I'm talking about the conference call or the meeting in a conference room. We need to meet more, but as individuals, as camaraderie exercises and the water cooler talk or critical thinkers, or all it doesn't have to be organized. It needs to be an environment where you can it can be organic. Because time is the only resource that can't be replenished. Money can be recovered. Equipment can be replaced. And new opportunities can come around. But every unnecessary meeting that takes place in your life, you don't get that time back. You don't get that time back. I mean, meet when you must. Decide quickly. Invite fewer people. Leave with defined action items. And remember, the goal of work is not to attend meetings. The goal of meetings is to make work better, more productive, more money, more profit. And if they're not doing that, stop calling the meetings. Call them what they are. It's not a meeting, it's a group project that nobody wanted. Did this hit home at all? I I won I once uh I heard not long ago, hey, a party without alcohol, it's not a party, it's a meeting. Tried to throw a little humor in here at the end. The thing is, you know it's true. An environment where you can talk about this and bring it up, that's what you're looking for. That's a good culture. That is a good culture. And I hope you are either there or you get there soon. Cancel the meeting. Decline the meeting. Propose a different time. The thing is, many people aren't planning or preparing to the point to where they have a conflict with the meeting. So let me know what you think. Yay, nay, other alternatives. I would love to hear some other alternatives of meetings or conference calls that are more productive and give you more time. We had uh many times. We had Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, prime time selling. No meetings, no calls. Bunch them up on Monday morning or Friday.

unknown 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Tell me what, tell me what you got. Hit me up, david at otalks.com or davidotalks.com, or just go to the website. There's stuff there. But let me know what you think. I know some of you, but I like meetings. I can't imagine that. You're the same people that like celery and green beans. Ugh. Please. All right. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for hanging on, but most of all, thanks for O talking with Dave. Giddy up.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Hey there. Are you having computer problems and can't get the help you need? Is there a language barrier or other obstacles that make you feel insignificant and unappreciated? We know just how you feel, and we are here to help. We are the Amish Tech Team. The Amish Tech Team is known for their work ethic, quality craftsmanship, and attention to detail. The Amish Tech Team will ride to your house, assess the situation, and leave you feeling good about the experience. Oh, Jedadiah was uh uh just a lovely young man. He didn't fix my computer, but he built me a new desk, repaired my roof, and planted two rows of corn in the backyard. All of our technicians at the Amish Tech Team are English speaking, respect traditions, and know their way around a grist mill. Send a letter by mail or carrier pigeon today, and when we get it, we will hop in the first buggy available and head out to your place. And the first 10 requests will get a complimentary jar of sorghum or an Amish Tech Team horseshoe to use as a paperweight. It's a real horseshoe. You don't have to put up with services that put you on hold or talk funny. Contact the Amish Tech Team, and we'll be right out as soon as we get your message and get free of our chores and load up the buggy and travel to your place, depending on traffic and the weather, and those dad blame motorized vehicles, and all those bright lights and shiny signs that keep us trapped in the horse. Are you out of work or looking for a new career? Do you feel like you have a lot of potential and just haven't hit your stride? We know just how you feel, and we are here to help. We are Cult Leader University, and we have the curriculum for you. Clue offers options to fit your schedule. Clue has entry-level courses in stockpiling, Kool-Aid making, catchy sing-alongs, and entry-level recruiting techniques. Once you've mastered these, you can move on to advanced courses in pontificating, standing like a guru, mastering the nostril flur, and holding an intimidating stir. Enroll at Clue, and if you pay for a full year in advance, Clue will help you develop your mantra, give you ideas for clothing requirements, and equip you with original handshakes, utterings, or code names. Don't wander around in anonymity. Enroll in clue and set your own rules. At Cult Leader University, we can't imagine what you're capable of, but we know it's impressive. Cult Leader University can change your life and the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to be around you. Remember, if you don't have a clue, we are the school for you. Have you recently started a new job and feeling a little overwhelmed with all the new challenges and requests from your coworkers? We know just how you feel, and we are here to help. Call Greenhorn Supply. We have everything you're being asked to deliver: blinker fluid, polka.paint, metric hammers. Don't look dumb just because you're new. Let us help you out. We've got left-handed screwdrivers, hammer grease, and if you need a bucket of steam, we just got in a truckload. And if you call in the next three minutes, we'll give you our free instruction manual covering how to milk a bowl and how to get to the second floor or the basement of a one-story building. Call 1-800-486-3862. That's 1-800-IM Dumb. Or visit our website at greenhornsupply.noedu. Plug in your social security number and credit card info and we'll deliver your order same day. Or just send us cash to 1449-Gullible Lane, BFE OU812, and we'll deliver your order same day. Don't look stupid just because you're new. Call Greenhorn Supply.