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As entrepreneurs, we know that effective communication is essential to leading teams, managing clients and growing our businesses. But what happens when the primary tool we use to communicate starts making our work less effective and enjoyable?
According to Harvard Business ReviewToday’s managers spend greater than 20 hours a week in meetings, and 65% say meetings prevent them from doing their job.
For an entrepreneur, ineffective and unproductive meetings are, at best, a distraction from work and, at worst, detrimental to business development. Indeed, according to A test from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, it also negatively affects your job satisfaction in the company, because the effectiveness of meetings directly correlates with job satisfaction. Fortunately, there are several ways to regain your time (and satisfaction). Here are five strategies I have adopted to reduce the time I spend in weekly meetings.
1. Implement calendar rules
Calendar rules are a set of calendar management standards. They provide help to, your team, and your clients understand when you are available for meetings. Plus, these are tools to provide help to avoid other people’s “always on” schedules. The simplest calendar rules indicate what hours you’re employed, when you are available for meetings, and when you will probably be working on other things.
A few years ago, when I used to be struggling with work-life balance, my operations manager and I created calendar rules for me as the CEO of our company. We wrote individual rules, adding things like “no more than three meetings per day” and (*5*) We then created a mock-up of my typical weekly calendar that we could share by programming it mechanically using our preferred calendar software.
For example, one of my calendar rules is that I have no meetings after 4:30 p.m., so I updated my calendar software to mechanically reject meetings sent to me outside of business hours.
2. Have a progressive scale to rate your communication tool
Not all messaging updates need to include meetings. We have opportunities to connect with our teams and customers. Reduce time spent in meetings by implementing a progressive scale for determining the best way to convey specific information. Start with nothing as a baseline and then step by step increase your level of commitment.
For example, if some type of communication is required, consider asynchronous communication (direct message or email) followed by a phone call. From there, you may proceed to a video call or in-person meeting. Tailor your communication vehicle to what you share to optimize your time and your team’s productivity.
3. Reduce default meeting times
Not every meeting should last an hour. In fact, according to Parkinson’s Law, your work hours will expand to suit your allotted time… if you put aside an hour – or 12.5% of the average work day – to discuss particular topics as a default. Automatically shorten all of your meetings. If the default is one hour, set the default to 30-45 minutes as an alternative. However, if your default meeting duration is half-hour, consider reducing your regular meetings to 15-20 minutes.
If you wish additional help implementing this policy, I exploit Google Calendar for our company to automate this process in my calendar. There is a setting called “fast meetings” which you can turn on to shorten the default meeting time.
4. Adopt a more productive meeting template
The biggest problem entrepreneurs face when it comes to meetings is their inefficiency. Some of this ineffectiveness stems from improper planning and conduct of meetings. I deal with this by all the time having a meeting coordinator assigned, running each meeting according to plan, and having clear meeting outcomes and next steps.
The strategic process framework we use for this purpose is called the IPO Meeting Framework; this includes input, process and output. The input section allows our team to plan and compile any essential files for the meeting in advance. Thanks to this strategy, we do not waste time looking for essential things during the meeting itself. The process section is the agenda or topics for discussion. We often describe this section and make notes in a joint document about each section of the “process” program. The resulting part is prepared during each meeting and incorporates subsequent steps and tasks for each party.
5. Use technology to improve communication
Planning and intentionality are the best tools for reducing the time we spend in weekly meetings. Fortunately, thanks to technology, we are able to scale this planning and intentionality to work for us, even if we’re not actively pondering about maintaining an ideal work schedule. Here are some tools I exploit in my company:
Loose (or other intra-office communication system): What I like about Slack is that I can quickly check and respond to my team’s queries without having to organize meetings. Additionally, Slack offers a company-wide, searchable record of project history. One thing to remember with Slack, as with any communication system, is that it will possibly be distracting if you let it. I encourage you to create some standard operating procedures for how you utilize the system.
Instead of always using Slack throughout the day and allowing yourself to be interrupted and distracted, make a rule that you simply only check Slack three to five times a day. In case of an emergency or urgent matter, ask your team to call you.
Voice or video notes: Sometimes the subtleties get lost when you are texting. To avoid this, I like to recommend using voice or video notes for your team; especially if you send detailed instructions or feedback. The advantage of video or phone calls is which you can easily share information by voice and/or screen sharing, but this is not limited to meetings. Sending asynchronous voice or video messages still allows you to issue specific instructions without having to schedule a meeting. Programs like Slack, Loom, and even text messaging make this possible.
Shared project notes: When I began building my agency virtual team A few years ago, we implemented the practice of using a shared document of meeting notes for each client to capture and track our project history.
These shared meeting notes have turn out to be an effective way for team members who cannot attend meetings to catch up on what happened. This also works for generating automatic meeting summaries for clients. With these summaries, clients can easily track project updates and have a clear record of next steps and project outcomes, which inevitably makes our next meeting with them more productive.
As an entrepreneur, you have a responsibility to implement modern tools that can be certain that ineffective meetings do not derail your progress. Whether it’s adopting calendar rules for when and what you’re employed on, using a progressive scale to evaluate communication tools, shortening default meeting times, using a more productive meeting template, or using technology to improve communication, each of them is With this tool you may spend less time on meetings and more time building your empire.