The Harvard Business Review (HBR ) recently published an article Meeting Overload on the reasons ?why managers attend so many meetings when they say they hate them and that 80% are a waste of time. The article concluded the main reason was the fear of missing out (FOMO). There may be some truth in this but in my experience this is not the main reason. The main reason managers attend meetings is that their boss expects them to. I think a more interesting question is why do bosses call so many meetings? 

The article doesn't differentiate between the types of meeting but I assume the general conclusion applies to all meetings including team meetings. The pandemic, lockdown and working from home did not signal the end of the team meeting. Instead it was replaced by the Zoom meeting. Once the novelty of attending a team meeting whilst still wearing your PJs, only your visible top half dressed for work, had worn off  Zoom meeting turned out to be no more productive or popular  than the traditional team meeting. 

Reflecting on my own experience as a senior manager, why was I so insistent that we hold a weekly team meeting? It was a model I was familiar with from previous organisations and local authorities and one that was modelled by the senior management team. But my team was not typical. Other teams in the directorate were made up of managers involved in the same area of business but responsible for different locations. They had a shared agenda and their team meetings were to discuss this. My team was a creation of a restructuring designed to cut senior posts, made up of the bits that didn't fit elsewhere. The managers covered different areas of business, half of which had not previously come under this directorate. The only thing they had in common was they were all managed by me. 

Initially the team meeting was to make the individuals feel they were part of a team and to make them feel they belonged in the directorate. Like any team the aim was to offer mutual support, us against the rest of the world as Alex Ferguson used to say. The standing agenda item was the round robin where each manager took it in turn to update the meeting on three issues they were dealing with. In the short term the purpose of this was to help everyone get a better understanding of their colleagues' area of business, including me as I didn't have a background or experience in some of these areas. In the long term the aim was to highlight the management issues they had in common with a view to reinforcing the corporate message that management skills were transferable. This was important for managers to appreciate and believe since the vision of an agile organisation required managers in the future to be adaptable and comfortable managing areas of business they had no professional background in or experience of. 

All the managers had staff groups to manage so the most obvious common ground was people management. Significantly this was the area of management that caused most concern. Everyone had experience, not always positive experience, of issues around recruitment, employee development, absenteeism, competence and personality conflicts or  ‘difficult' people in their team. Managing a diverse workforce threw up issues around harassment and bullying claims, disciplinary investigations /hearings and the almost inevitable experience of being the subject of a grievance. The team meeting offered a forum for mutual support, and some useful tips on how to approach HR to obtain the most helpful response. 

So why are bosses are so keen on time consuming, costly, stressfully, unproductive and unpopular meetings? Not all meetings are the same. I like to think mine were in the 20% but I guess everyone does. Come to think of it someone did suggest moving to fortnightly team meetings!