Eye-opening: We read “Kill Bad Meetings” by Alan and Kevan Hall

247meeting sells a product nobody wants: meetings. It doesn’t matter how many technical pain points we resolve through products like 247meeting Mobile – there is one pain point we can’t write an algorithm for: bad meetings. We’ve certainly put our 2c into the conversation and shared helpful content such as When Not to Hold a Meeting, tips to make meetings more effective and some basic conference call etiquette dos and don’ts. However, “Kill Bad Meetings” goes in depth into every business’ biggest pain point.

“Kill Bad Meetings: Cut 50% of your meetings to transform your culture, improve collaboration, and accelerate decisions” – to give the book it’s full title, makes a lot of promises early on. “Kill Bad Meetings” delivers. Despite its slim size, it comprehensively covers what makes bad meetings and what you can do so no one dreads getting an invitation to your meeting – kill your bad meetings instead.

The authors of this book, Kevan and Alan Hall, have an extensive experience in training and consulting. The book isn’t just made of mere suppositions. Their method has been tested and approved by more than 300 world’s leading companies such as Samsung, Mars or PepsiCo.

Managers spend two days per week in meetings!

Recent research reveals that managers can devote up to 40% of their time, or two days per week, to meetings! “Kill Bad Meetings” makes the unnerving but fair claim that one of those days is wasted time but instead of treating it as a necessary evil “Kill Bad Meetings” makes a move to win that time back.

While recent developments in remote and virtual meetings within industry leaders such as WebEx, Zoom or Skype for Business have made the setup and execution of meetings simple and easy to use, it has resulted in more meetings being conducted rather than more efficient meetings being conducted. The problem of bad meetings is a very human problem, which technology is at a loss to solve.

“Facilitation training just helps us to be more efficient at running meetings that do not need to happen.”

“Kill Bad Meetings” tackles this problem head-on by looking at a company’s culture and attitude towards collaboration. Anyone with experience in management can relate to creativity and collaboration being difficult to encourage among even very talented employees. Fear of ridicule or reprimands for lack of performance can leave employees wanting to hide in plain sight at meetings and deprives the company of valuable, decision influencing ideas.

Against bad meetings, tackle company’s culture

Speaking of making decisions, some company cultures create needless and sometimes unconscious barriers to implementing employee input. Sometimes this can be a sign off from several departments, creating even more wasteful meetings. But there can be many other reasons. “Kill Bad Meetings” will encourage you to change your company’s culture around communication so you can tap into every great idea.

The book essentially gives you a roadmap for making more efficient and effective meetings a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Based) goal. It walks you through the resources and finances that are squandered through poorly managed and planned meetings to make it relevant for both you and the stakeholders in your company. “Kill Bad Meetings” runs through the specific causes of these problematic meetings, gives you benchmarkers to make the goals measurable and realistic and the book urges you to accomplish your newly found goals by giving you specific action points to follow.

“Kill Bad Meetings” is a perfect toolkit for seamlessly achieving the corporate holy grail: productive, engaging and satisfying meetings for your highly skilled employees, your managers and your stakeholders.

There is also a multitude of little exercises and practices you can implement to break away from the traditional meeting format. A wonderful article from Time Doctor offers 31 of these tips for you to try out in your next Monday morning meeting. Check it out here!