How to stop meetings going round in circles
Senior executives should need no instruction in the value of time; time is supposed to be money, after all. Yet Michael Mankins, a partner at Marakon Associates, a management consultancy, believes big companies have virtually no grasp of how to manage the time their leaders spend together. “They treat time as if it were a free resource,” he says.
His comments are based on research from the Economist Intelligence Unit covering 187 global companies with market capitalisations of at least $1bn. The results are less than impressive.
Of the average 21 hours a month top executives spend together, less than three hours are devoted to strategy. Some 80 per cent of time is taken up by issues that account for less than 20 per cent of a company's long-term value: operations, tactics, information-sharing, roving discussion.
Just 5 per cent of respondents said their company had a disciplined process for focusing attention on matters of potentially high value. Agendas were ad hoc affairs dictated principally by the crisis of the moment. One company even set priorities for its top team's meetings according to whichever executive mentioned their pet topic first.
As a result, the urgent crowds out the important, the research found. Some 60 per cent of the executives said they often got sidetracked before the important items were reached, while22 per cent said it wasnormal to run out oftime before critical items came up. Just 12 per cent believed their top management meetings consistently produced decisions on important strategic issues, while 53 per cent doubted their productivity. Furthermore, many organisations said they had difficulty making decisions stick, because they were not clear about what had been agreed.
“To be only spending three hours a month on strategy including mergers and acquisitions was surprising even to those of us who knew many companies find it extremely difficult to manage meetings in an effective way,” says Mr Mankins. Naturally, he has some strong disciplinary medicine. First, whoever controls strategy should take charge of the agenda. Next, prune it radically. Senior teams are about taking decisions, and items that do not require decisions should be ditched. Mr Mankins includes in this category many workforce issues, such as diversity and employee satisfaction subjects some have been struggling to get on to boardroom agendas for decades.
“If you look at the dialogues around workforce issues, they are very rarely decision-focused. They are basically about information-sharing, and there are other vehicles for that.” Time must be allotted to items solely on the basis of their value to the company, he says. Lastly, deal with strategy and operations
separately, to the extent of holding separate meetings. One company that has done this is ABN Amro, the Dutch bank. Formerly, its board would meet twice a week for three hours. Now it meets once a week for operations and once a month for a whole day to talk about strategy.
Other companies have developed their own techniques. According to a Harvard Business Review article, the chief executive officer's committee at Cadbury Schweppes distributes reading material to participants five days before a meeting. A note indicates whether agenda items are for information, discussion or decision: those labelled for decision are the
priority, while executives are encouraged to find other ways to handle secondary items.
When he was chairman and chief executive of Lloyds TSB, Sir Brian Pitman insisted on several options being outlined before a meeting decided on a course of action. “To be confident of what you are accepting, you have got to understand what you are rejecting,” he said. The EIU results reinforce other research about the shortcomings of meetings. An annual survey carried out by MCI, the communications company formerly called WorldCom, claims that of the 11m meetings held every day in the US in 2003, half were reckoned to be a waste of time by the managers who took part. According to The Strategy of Meetings, a book by George David Kieffer, a US lawyer, the skills of running an effective meeting developing thinking, motivating people and bringing ideas to fruition are rarely taught. “Most professionals do not think seriously about the impact unproductive meetings have on their organisations,” he laments.
There are famous exceptions, however. Andy Grove, former president and chief executive of Intel, the US chipmaker, used to give a short course on meetings to all new employees. In addition, all meeting rooms displayed three questions on the wall: “Do you know the purpose of this meeting? Do you have an agenda? Do you know your role?”
开会技巧：高管须知
对于时间的宝贵，高级行政人员并不需要指导；毕竟，他们都知道时间就是金钱。然而管理咨询公司Marakon Associates的合伙人迈克尔?曼金斯（Michael Mankins）认为，很多大公司并不真正懂得如何安排老总们在一起的时间。他说，“他们对待时间的态度，就好像那是免费的资源一样。”
他这番评论是基于经济学人智库（Economist Intelligence Unit）一项对全球187个企业的研究，这些企业的总市值至少达10亿美元。但这项研究的结果并未令人欣慰。
企业最高行政人员平均每月花21小时相聚在一起，而用在战略上的时间却不足3小时。大约80%的时间被占用来讨论那些与公司长期价值相关性低于20%的问题：例如运营、战术、信息分享、漫无边际的讨论等。
只有5%的受访人说，他们公司有严格的程序，使他们把注意力集中在具有高潜在价值的事情上。一般而言，会议议程基本上是为了应付当前的危机而临时凑合起来。有一家公司甚至在高管人员会议上根据谁先提起其最爱谈的话题，来决定议程的优先次序。
结果，研究发现，紧急事务挤走了重要议题。大约有60%的高管人员说，他们常常在未就重要议题达成共识之前被别的事情转移了精力；而有22%的人说，通常是还未提及关键的议题就已经没有时间了。只有12%的人认为，他们的高管会议一直能够针对重要的战略问题做出决策；而53%的人对这样的效率存有疑问。而且，许多机构表示，他们很难切实执行决策，因为他们并不清楚会议上达成了什么共识。
曼金斯先生说，“每月只花3小时讨论包括合并收购在内的战略问题，即使对于我们已经了解许多公司难以有效组织会议的人来说，也是令人吃惊的。”对此，他自然能够建议一套强有力的纪律约束。首先，谁负责战略决策，谁就得负责会议议程。其次，要将议程大幅精简。高层管理团队是要执行决策的，不需要拍板的事项要删掉。曼金斯先生认为，许多劳工问题属于此列，比如员工的多样性和满意度等。几十年来，有些人一直在努力让这些问题提上董事会的议程安排中。
“如果你看一下关于劳工问题的对话，你会发现它们极少与决策相关，而基本上是与信息共享有关，这完全可以通过其他途径解决。”他说，必须根据对公司的价值大小来分配讨论这些事项的时间。
最后，要分开处理战略与运营问题，甚至安排不同的会议来分别讨论这两方面的问题。荷兰银行已经这么做了。过去，它的董事会一周开两次会，每次耗时3小时。现在，董事会每周开一次运营方面的会；每月开一次一整天的会议讨论战略问题。
其他公司也想出了自己的会议技巧。据《哈佛商业评论》一篇文章说，吉百利史威士公司（Cadbury Schweppes）首席执行官办公室会在开会前5天将有关阅读资料分发给与会者，并附上关于议程事项是作为信息传达、讨论议题还是有待议决的注明：标明需要议决的事项将优先处理，与会行政人员被鼓励想出其他办法来处理次要事项。
当布莱恩?皮特曼爵士担任劳埃德银行（Lloyds TSB）董事长兼首席执行官时，就曾坚持在会议决定采取某项行动方案之前，先准备好几套备选方案。他说，“要对你将接受的东西有信心，就必须明白你拒绝的是什么。”经济学人智库的研究结果进一步印证了有关会议缺点的其它研究成果。前身为世通（WorldCom）的通讯公司MCI进行的一项年度调查显示，2003年在美国每天召开的1100万个会议中，与会的管理人员认为有一半是浪费时间。而美国律师乔治?戴维?基弗尔（George David Kieffer）在他的《会议的策略》一书中说，几乎没有人学过如何令会议有效地促进思维、激励与会者，以及将想法变成实效的技巧。他哀叹道，“大多数专业人士都没有认真想过徒劳无益的会议对他们的机构有什么影响。”
不过，也有著名的例外。美国芯片制造商英特尔（Intel）的前总裁和首席执行官安迪?格罗夫（Andy Grove）就曾经给所有新员工上如何开会的短课。而且，所有会议室都在墙上贴着3个问题：“你知道这次会议的目的吗？你有会议的议程吗？你知道自己在会议中的角色吗？”
