The Surprising Science of Meetings

Acknowledge that meetings can cause a lot of frustration, and assess your meetings to seek improvements.

Everyone needs to meet for team discussions, interdepartment alignment and group decision making. But everyone needs to meet effectively. Meetings can cause frustration, especially when they waste time and energy due to a bad meeting culture.

Think of the opportunity costs: While you’re stuck with your colleagues in a meeting, you all could be spending time doing real work. When your company manages meetings effectively, meetings add to productivity and organizational cohesion. And when it doesn’t, they add to cost. In 2014, meetings cost the United States’ economy about $1.4 trillion – roughly 8% of the nation’s GDP that year.

Rather than getting rid of meetings, solve your problems with them by applying science.

Employees have no lack of cynicism when it comes to meetings. Yet getting rid of all meetings is not feasible. Without meetings, you would lose contact with your colleagues, disconnect from other departments and become single-minded about difficult problems. Rather than eliminating meetings...