Are One Hour Meetings Still Necessary?

Are One Hour Meetings Still Necessary?

Matt Brewer
Contributing Writer
Direct Energy/Success Academy

Do you ever get a meeting request and cringe when you see the time frame? I know I do! It seems that the default time for all meetings or in house training sessions is set for an hour and to me it seems like such a waste of productive time. While I believe meetings and training are an absolute necessity in business do they really need to be an hour, or more?

In the learning and development community the big rage is all about micro-learning. Micro-learning is short bursts of training that last no more than 4 minutes. The purpose is to give the learner specific information that can easily be digested in small chunks. I am not saying let’s have 4 minute meetings but I do believe that we can apply this concept in to our team meetings. First, let’s look at the production that is lost when we have an hour meeting. If you have a staff of 10 and you pull them in for an hour meeting, you are essentially losing 10 potential production hours in one fell swoop. In the same sense if we did 30 minute meetings, we would only be losing 5 potential production hours. We all know the more production time we get out of our employees the better off we will all be in meeting our billable hours, deadlines or bottom line.

Secondly, a study conducted by statisticbrain.com, shows that the average human attention span is roughly 8.25 seconds. SECONDS! That is a shorter attention span than goldfish who come in at 9 seconds. I didn’t believe this to be true, but then I realized writing three paragraphs has taken me nearly 30 minutes. OUCH! So if we all follow the training standard of engaging the audience every 8 minutes that means we should cover 7.5 topics and the audience will only pay attention for approximately one minute.  By these numbers micro-learning is even too long. What’s next nano-learning?

I believe we have a major opportunity to make better use of our time as well as those attending by incorporating the micro-learning process to our meetings. My thoughts are that we plan the meeting with a singular purpose in mind. If we are going to talk about performance, that is the sole topic covered. If we are going to discuss new policies, then that is the topic. The more information you try to cram in to one meeting the more the message gets lost in translation to those attending. If you can cover a topic in 10 minutes, then the meeting should be done in 10-15 minutes. This will increase productivity, ensure that your message was heard and give the attendees a clear objective that they can begin focusing on when the meeting is over.

Some things to consider when using the micro-learning approach, try holding the meeting somewhere differently and have the attendees stand in a circle throughout the meeting. This will change the participants mindset as you go through the meeting. Unless it is absolutely necessary, avoid PowerPoint presentations, make the meeting more of a discussion. This will make the attendees more engaged.  Create a survey about the meeting to gauge the participants understanding. Free online survey sites such as SurveyMonkey.com make it easy to create questions and see the answers to ensure that the intended message was received.

My opinion is that if you want to increase productivity and get more from those attending, don’t be bound by the dreadful one hour meeting. Creativity and a rifle like focus on topics will see greater improvement.