Meetings, or the misuse of meetings, have become one of the most significant productivity black holes. Paradoxically, it now takes more time to plan the work than to do it.
Many blame remote work for increasing the time spent in meetings, but the truth is that it's only highlighted a problem that has little to do with distance and a lot to do with the complexity of businesses and the current economy.
The highest-paid messengers in history. Derek Thompson, a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of the Work in Progress newsletter, rightly pointed out in an article that white-collar workers now must attend meetings. This statement is controversial because it essentially reduces their position to that of messengers carrying information from one part of the company to another.
According to the most recent June update of the WFH Research report, carried out by Stanford University, the percentage of remote work has quadrupled compared to 2019. This also translated to an increase meetings, which were already on the rise before remote work became more common.
The data: 153% more meetings. In 2016, a group of researchers published data from a study in Harvard Business Review, revealing that the number of meetings had increased by 50% since the 1990s. “Buried under an avalanche of requests for information or advice, some workers spend more time in meetings, taking calls, and checking their inboxes than doing their most critical work,” the researchers said.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2022 study found that the number of weekly meetings had increased by 153% compared to 2020 data. This percentage shows a clear upward trend that spiked after the pandemic but has been happening for a long time.
One workday to meet, another to work. As my colleague Javier Lacort pointed out in an article some time ago, meetings are displacing effective working time. In other words, those who work remotely have the same options to continue working at 10 p.m. as at 8 a.m.
Researchers at Microsoft investigated this theory and found that employees were taking their entire 9-to-5 workday to attend work meetings and then logging back on to do their actual job when the workday was over. “I think we’ve reached the highest point of maximum human inefficiency in white-collar work. Sometimes it feels like the modern worker spends more time talking about work than actually working,” Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s vice president of artificial intelligence and work trends, told The Atlantic.
Complex industries, complex processes. The Microsoft expert attributed the increase in meetings to the growing complexity of business structures and processes. As a result, different departments have to approve every decision. The Wall Street Journal called this “the coordination tax,” which takes its toll in the form of meeting time.
This tax refers to a kind of “chaos theory” in which the slightest flutter of a butterfly, such as a change in a company’s online store, affects the back-end, front-end, marketing, production, planning, administration, and so on.
Plurality in decision-making. Spataro pointed out that the shift in corporate culture, which increasingly relies on giving employees a voice, means spending more time and resources listening to their opinions.
But that’s no excuse. Shopify demonstrated that many meetings can be avoided with a simple email or memo, the same thing former Amazon president and CEO Jeff Bezos demanded of his employees.
Image | Unsplash (Austin Distel)
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