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Keep Meetings to 30 Minutes or Less

Have you ever called someone during business hours and been told that that person was in a meeting? That’s fine. “A return call will do” is the typical response.

Time goes by; actually a lot of time normally goes by, and the return call finally comes. The person apologetically says, “So sorry; I’ve been in meetings all day.” It happens to the best of us, the meeting part, that is.

As frustrating as that delay is for the original caller, it’s a guarantee that the person who was being called, who has been trapped in those meetings, is the real victim. Increasingly, meetings are the norm. Lots of them and for long periods. Statistically, most chief executives spend nearly a third of their workweek in meetings.

One of my favorite bosses was the late Colonel Thomas P. Garigan. He was the public affairs officer at West Point in the mid-1970s. Tom was smart in so many ways. One of them was the frequency and length of the staff meetings he held.

He had a proverb displayed prominently on the table in his office. It said, “No meeting shall last longer than necessary.”

Tom lived by this and made his staff live by it too. We were delighted.

As his media relations officer, I had plenty of business to attend to. Much of it was outside the office, escorting reporters or sitting in on interviews. Taking time for a meeting was problematic for me. Fortunately, there weren’t many to contend with.

From that point on, Tom Garigan’s rule became my rule. Hold meetings infrequently and keep them to a minimum. The frequency part is easy. Have them only when you need them and have something to say or share. As for the length of the meeting, my rule is simple: keep meetings to 30 minutes or less if at all possible.

Why? If it takes more than 30 minutes, there had better be a crisis to deal with. If not, you ought to be able to handle most matters in a half hour or less.

That’s easily done if you are the one who has called the meeting. How? Keep the number of attendees down to only those who are essential. This is particularly helpful advice if you are managing a meeting for the boss. Limit the seats at the table to those who deserve or need one.

Unfortunately, you can’t always control the behavior of those at the table. Nothing can kill the mood of a meeting more quickly than a dominator, someone who disrupts or monopolizes the conversation. Another killer is a rambler, one who takes the conversation to places that have little or no relevance to the subject.

There are plenty of naysayers in the world, and if one happens to attend your meeting, she or he can prolong the discussion just by projecting negativity. The deadliest attendee of all is one who seeks attention by cracking jokes or trying to sound funny when he or she’s not. It ruins the mood of the meeting and the flow of conversation.

Then there are those who fall hostage to their portable electronic devices and spend more time checking their e-mail than contributing to the conversation. They don’t consume time as much as waste it. “No device” bans need to be erected to curb these culprits.

With respect to an agenda, create one and distribute it to the attendees at least a day in advance. Prioritize the items to be discussed so that the most important ones get early and full deliberation. Let all the attendees know the timeline and the expectation to be punctual, to be engaged, and to be crisp in making their points.

The punctual part requires everyone to be on time for the prescribed start of the meeting. One way to encourage that is to lock the door as the meeting starts; latecomers are denied access.

This is all easy if you are in charge of the meeting. If you are simply an attendee and want to help with the flow of the meeting, you may have to be creative. Checking your watch every few minutes might not endear you to the organizer of the meeting.

If you are truly pressed for time, let the person who called the meeting know in advance that you have only so much time to devote to the meeting or that you have a pressing conflict. If the meeting minutes are posted later, you will not have lost anything; in fact, you will have gained something—time.

At some organizations people are becoming so anal when it comes to cutting down on time spent in company meetings that everyone has to stand. Sitting and nonwork chitchat are viewed as unacceptable. The object of standing tall is to eliminate long-winded dissertations. Some have found that holding their meetings with people standing, especially meetings held near lunchtime, reduces meeting time by a third.

Why is all this important? Because time is one of the most important resources in your life. It can be a friend or a foe. If you lose time or waste time, you abuse time. This is especially important for the boss, normally the busiest person of all.

Keep time on your side. Keep those meetings to a minimum in terms of frequency and duration. You will be glad you did. The person who will appreciate it most is your boss, who is paying you to be the most productive you can be. He or she may even agree with the unknown author who said, “Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.”

If you are in the middle of an organizational crisis, all bets are off. You may need to meet often and for long periods to strategize and plan a way forward.

During such crisis periods, you actually are apt to lose any sense of time. Hours may seem like minutes, and days may simply dissolve into the seemingly endless time it takes to solve the problem. That may take weeks or months. That may also entail meetings galore. Whatever it takes on crisis occasions is time well spent.