Research on 19 million meetings and 6,500 professionals across the UK, Germany, and the US reveals a staggering $457 billion wasted on meetings. While meetings are essential for decision-making, Doodle's survey highlights their inefficiency:
Endless meetings have become a habit, yet they often waste time, drain morale, and kill motivation.
One of the world’s most successful companies - Google, has established its criteria for a worth-holding meeting. This approach aims to eliminate wasted time and boost employee motivation.
Your business might not be as big or diverse as Google, but there’s a lot you can learn from how they run their meetings.
Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself: Is it really necessary? Is it worth pulling your employees away from their work to sit in a conference room?
In the book “How Google Works”, Eric Schmidt, former CEO and current Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc., shared how he asked his team to create meeting guidelines for all Google employees.
One of the key rules is to only hold a meeting if it’s absolutely necessary. Employees are encouraged not to schedule meetings without a clear purpose.
Research shows that nearly 67% of meetings are either pointless or could be streamlined. This is why you need to reconsider how you approach them.
You can apply this to your business by answering these questions every time a meeting is scheduled:
For many inefficient companies, the first solution to any issue seems to be a big executive meeting. Instead, take a lesson from Google and think carefully before making the final decision to hold one.
A meeting without a clear agenda or structure can quickly go off track and drag on for hours. To improve productivity, always create a clear outline of the topics to be discussed. Even more importantly, share the agenda with participants at least 24 hours in advance so they can prepare and contribute effectively.
We don’t have the whole day for meetings. Establishing alignment from the outset encourages participants to present their views concisely, staying on-topic and aligned with the objectives to deliver the most value.
At Google, Marissa Mayer (former Google executive and CEO of Yahoo) held nearly 70 meetings a week and was known as one of the most creative and effective decision-makers. Her key rule for any meeting was to have a clear and well-prepared agenda. Employees had to provide the agenda in advance if they wanted to meet with her. This approach helped her and other Google executives cut down on unnecessary meetings.
Do you often attend meetings where everyone has an equal say, leading to deadlocks and no clear way forward?
This situation is all too common.
That’s why Google ensures that every meeting has a clear leader who is responsible for making the final decision. This person manages the meeting, sets the agenda, and decides who should attend. This way, even with debates and disagreements, a final decision is always made, keeping the team moving forward.
You can apply this rule to meetings at all levels. Even in small brainstorming sessions, make sure there’s a leader to keep the meeting on track and running smoothly.
Have you ever felt disappointed or left out because you weren’t invited to an important meeting or a cross-department discussion?
If the answer is yes, you’re not alone.
Kristen Gill, Vice President of Business Operations at Google, believes many people are invited to meetings just as a "badge of honor" and don’t actually contribute. To change this mindset, Kristen implemented Google's 10-person rule, which states that the fewer people in a meeting, the better, and it should not exceed 10 people.
Research shows that meetings with fewer than 10 people are often more effective and persuasive.
A simple way to do this is by asking why a specific person is invited to the meeting. Whether that person contributed directly to the meeting or not?
Don’t encourage people to attend meetings just to feel important or act as spectators. Every participant should have a clear, valid reason to be there.
One of the main reasons most meetings waste time is that people gather, discuss different ideas, but fail to clearly define action items and individual responsibilities.
When responsibilities aren’t clearly assigned, everyone assumes someone else will take care of the task.
Google faced a similar issue but addressed it with the "Buck stops here" method. Simply put, every action item discussed in a meeting must have a deadline and a person directly responsible for it. This is similar to Apple’s D.R.I. (Directly Responsible Individual) approach.
This rule applies to all meetings, including brainstorming and idea-generation sessions. Once a meeting is held, it can’t end without action items being assigned with clear responsibilities.
This simple approach helped Google develop and release over 100 features of Google+ in just 90 days.
Google is synonymous with innovation and constant experimentation. The founders of Google follow the principle of "launching strategies early and often" in every aspect of the business.
This allows them to quickly test new products and features in small groups, measure performance, and make changes as needed.
Thanks to this culture, decision-making at Google is entirely based on data-driven evidence, not personal opinions. This is also one of the key points in Marissa Mayer’s “9 Principles of Innovation.”
A similar approach should be applied in meetings to help build and promote a culture of transparency within the company. Don’t let a decision be made without clear data-backed evidence.
Research shows that nearly 87% of people think answering phones and texting during meetings is inappropriate. However, most people still do it.
Using a smartphone or laptop in a fast-paced, important meeting not only distracts you but also bothers others. It gets even worse when some companies allow tea or snacks during meetings.
Breaking these habits isn’t easy since they’re part of the company culture. Eric Schmidt himself admitted that it’s hard to convince employees to close their laptops during meetings, but Google still tries to make this change.
Stand-up meetings are often seen as part of startup culture. But more than that, a study at the University of Washington showed that people tend to be more energetic, engaged, and productive when participating in stand-up meetings.
In most status update meetings, participants are required to stand instead of sitting. You can apply this approach to other types of meetings as well.
Kristen Gill even supports walking during meetings when needed. Her philosophy at Google is simple: If a decision is waiting to be made, it should be handled immediately, even if it means walking to the decision-maker's office and having a stand-up meeting.
According to Parkinson’s Law, company meetings should last no more than 15 minutes. Avoid scheduling meetings that last 1 or 2 hours. Of course, not all meetings can be finished quickly, so be flexible if there’s a valid reason to extend the time.
The 15-minute time frame also has a scientific basis. According to TED curator Chris Anderson, 18 minutes is the ideal length to capture people's attention. Anything around this time leads to higher productivity and focus. That’s why most TED talks last between 15-18 minutes.
Every time you and your employees have a meeting, there are both direct and indirect costs involved. Your salary is the most obvious cost. Research shows that once an employee leaves their desk for a meeting, it usually takes about 25 minutes for them to refocus on their work.
Most people don’t realize that meetings come with costs. If they did, they would likely be more mindful of how they spend their work time.
You can easily do this by tracking the costs of meetings and sharing them with employees at the end of the month. When the numbers show that employees have spent 30-35 hours in meetings, along with the associated costs, your team will likely be more mindful in the future.
Your meetings can easily go off track due to heated debates or discussions about creative products. But as mentioned earlier, meetings have costs, so you need to keep them on track, just like the agenda.
Jake Knapp, a design partner at GV (Google’s venture arm), does this with a simple timer. For 30-minute meetings, Jake sets the timer and places it where everyone can see it. The rule is simple—once the timer goes off, the meeting ends.
The timer has a strong psychological effect, creating a sense of urgency for everyone in the meeting. If someone is given 5 minutes to speak and goes over time, the timer makes it clear who is responsible for causing the meeting to run long.
In conclusion, meetings don’t have to be a productivity killer. The key is to Keep them purposeful, concise, and relevant, and you’ll not only save time but also boost employee engagement and morale.
As Peter Drucker once said, “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” By making meetings more focused and efficient, you allow space for the real ideas and insights to emerge.
So, how are your meetings going?