"If you had to (say in) one word why the human race has not, & will never achieve its full potential, that word would be meetings." ~ Dave Barry

"Wow, this is the best meeting ever!"

Many companies just love to meet. And meet. And meet again. In fact when I try to coach with Supervisors or the Manager of a Contact Center, I find they have to search really hard for times when they are NOT in meetings.

There are meetings with other departments: Marketing, Sales, Operations, Accounting, Field Operations, Training, HR. Then the meetings the Manager has with their Contact Center Leadership team. The Vice President holds meetings which the Manager has to attend. Some meetings even involve travel time.

To be fair, many meetings held by or for the Contact Center team are very productive and result in improvements for the operation which positively affect Customers and employees.

But some end up being meetings to plan the next meeting. Nothing is ever decided. It seems to be very difficult for some Managers to make a decision on anything. They feel overwhelmed or their personality is such that they over-think everything because they are afraid to make a mistake. But our lack of decisiveness will certainly have a negative impact on our operation and our Customers. It also may make us look weak to those we are leading.

You have to become an "Efficiency Expert" on meetings.

Start asking some of these questions:

• How many hours per week are you and your team in meetings?

• Who really needs to attend the meetings and why?
• Has the person organizing the meeting made clear the agenda & expectations for what will result from the meeting? If not, how will you clarify?
  
• Is everyone involved in the dialogue or is it a lecture instead of a discussion?
  
• Can information from a meeting be reported back by one or two members of your team or does everyone need to attend?

If you are the one planning the meeting:

• Have a clear purpose and agenda to follow
• Hold to the scheduled timeframe
• Have someone take notes on who will be doing what after the meeting and email the confirmed tasks to everyone
• Confirm when the follow-up meeting (if needed) will take place and the expectations for what will be accomplished in that meeting

• Is another meeting really needed or are you just avoiding making a decision?

If you can eliminate just a few of those time wasting meetings each month, just think how much time your team will have for Coaching and on-the-job Operational improvements which will really bring results.