Are your leadership meetings unproductive? A problem analysis

Unproductive meetings waste time and costs while limiting a company’s innovation, alignment, and speed – a serious threat in today’s complex business world. Therefore, as leaders, we have to put all our efforts into understanding what we do well and not so well regarding our meetings.

This white paper analyses the most common meeting problems in today’s organisations. Unlike many other publications on meetings, we go beyond merely listing meeting frustrations and take a deep dive into the leading causes of unproductive leadership meetings. The paper draws from a growing community of meeting scientists, whose thought leader estimates that 50% of the time spent on managing and conducting meetings is unproductive. It is complimented by real-life examples, for example from a large industrial company where a lack of speed in the executive meeting process threatened the organisation’s competitiveness.

We identified four dimensions of unproductive meetings

1. Strategy

Organisations ignore the strategic importance of meetings.

2. People

People lack knowledge and training in productive meeting management.

3. Processes

Dysfunctional, outdated, and slow meeting management processes.

4. Technology

Organisations fail to use the full potential of technology.

The paper thoroughly analyses these four dimensions of meeting problems and illustrates the vicious circle that they create. Understanding unproductive meeting management and its associated costs will help leaders drive actions towards improving their meeting culture. So dare to ask: Are my leadership meetings productive enough?