Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2013. Its “Tuesday at 4 p.m.” recommendation comes from an Expansión article of November 2011.
In the LinkedIn group Directivos y Dirigentes (Spanish for “executives and leaders”), a debate opened up about the best day of the week to hold a company meeting. Some thought first thing on Monday, others thought last thing on Friday, and the most articulate thought midweek would be much better. Of course, according to Expansión, human resources experts consider the best time to be Tuesday at four in the afternoon.
In our view: not Monday, not Tuesday, not Sunday. Any company that has a fixed day and time on the calendar for a weekly meeting is an inefficient company (in my opinion). I’ve always compared having a fixed day for meetings with having a fixed day for intimacy with your partner. Many couples think the best day is Saturday night, because they’ve recovered from the working week and don’t have to get up early on Sunday.
Just as the ideal day for a couple is “whenever you feel like it”, a meeting should be called when there are important matters to discuss, not as a business routine.
Maybe a company shouldn’t hold a single meeting for a whole month, and then in one particular week it needs two. If we surveyed workers about what they think of scheduled company meetings, they’d tell us they’re a waste of time: basically the same topics come up, rarely is anything new said or learned, or, worse still, they rarely find that the company comes up with a solution to the points raised.
Add to this that some workers may have to travel a considerable distance, and an unproductive or repetitive meeting does nothing but demotivate and wear out that person.
Looking back a few years, for three months I drove 275 km every week to attend the company meeting on Friday afternoons. Every time I came out of the meeting I felt I had wasted more than 10 hours of my time and nearly 600 unnecessary kilometers to attend a meeting whose points could have been told to me over the phone. Week after week problems were raised, and week after week they were left unsolved, until finally you sit down with your manager and tell them you won’t attend another meeting until the problem you’re raising is solved.
Years later, when you’ve been a victim of the time wasted in these needless meetings imposed by company policy and you’re the one in charge of leading teams, you try not to make the same mistakes you lived through.
In conclusion, during my time in management and team leadership, it was more than proven that holding a meeting only when it’s necessary and promises to be productive keeps people from losing interest or turning up reluctantly when a meeting is called. On top of that, you have to do everything you can to take proper note of every comment workers raise in the meeting; otherwise, these meetings are completely useless.
See also: Experts reveal their tricks for being more productive
As a rule, the idea of holding weekly meetings usually comes from people who never had to sit through weekly meetings at the bottom of the org chart. If they had, they’d see things very differently. There will always be exceptions, of course, and this is just my own personal view, which may be right or wrong, but at the very least it’s worth thinking about.
Further reading
- HR directors share the reasons they reject candidates
- 10 signs you’re burned out at work
- 9 simple, extraordinary things to say to people at work every day
Featured image: Casey Hugelfink, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
