How To Turn a Meeting Into An Email
The amount of time spent in meetings does NOT equal more productivity, revenue, or success. We should not be surprised by this. The more time we spend in meetings, the less time we have doing the work that actually needs to be done. You know - the forecasting, the proposals, the analyzing, the research, the project requirements, chasing invoices and responding to those lingering emails.
No one likes a meeting that could have been an email and yet… we are experiencing more meetings than we have ever experienced in our post-pandemic, hybrid workforce.
We have seen the amount of meetings increase by 70% (!!!) Paczka, 2022.
What’s more? Over two thirds of people spend 4-10 hours per week in meetings and 71% of those meetings are considered unproductive. Yikes.
So… what gives? And how can we take back our time to do the work we actually need to be doing in order to be productive (and successful in our roles)?
Don’t feel tied to a hosting a meeting because “that’s the way it’s always been done”. In 2020, the workforce proved the corporate world can work remotely and in 2022 and 2023 we can prove that meetings can, in fact, be an email.
I always promise to deliver practical communication advice so instead of just talking about how unproductive meetings are to our workdays, I'm going to give a formula to take that meeting of the calendar and give you more time back in your days.
How to turn a meeting into an email -
"Hey all, due to the nature of this meeting and the updates intended for this time on the calendar, we are going to repurpose the time we have together into a working email moving forward.
The goal of this meeting was originally to …
We haven’t been accomplishing as much as we could in the time organized today so instead, we will move this to a working email/document.
Here's what you can expect from me -
Here's what I need from you -
If the necessary information is not provided by xx day/time each week, we will resume these meetings (but let’s work together to make sure we can all work on our time without more meetings taking up our precious time!)
Can you all respond to this email with confirmation of this strategy moving forward?"
Be transparent about the original goal of the meeting, why the decision was made to pivot it into a working document/email and be explicit in the deadlines/requests needed. And be transparent about the fact that if this strategy does not work, the team will need to pivot.
This strategy will primarily work if you are the facilitator/organizer of the meetings but don't worry, I have a script for attendees below too.
How to turn a meeting into an email as an attendee -
The first piece of advice I have for you is to not be afraid to speak up. Your ideas could have a huge impact on the productivity of your organization. And here’s the script to be confident in using your voice to express your thoughts:
“Hey xx, I've noticed that a considerable amount of time in my week is spent in meetings. And lately, the meetings I am are only used for sharing quick updates (and most go off on unrelated tangents). I was thinking about how we could fix this and make this a more productive use of our time. I was thinking we could repurpose xx meeting and xx meeting into a working doc/email format and then remove the meeting from the calendar until we need to collaborate on specific issues. What are your thoughts?”
The goal of Civil Communication is to bring your humanity back into the workplace. The goal of Career Civility is to help you use your voice and take up space. Your ideas deserve to be heard. And your expertise deserves to be respected.
Be the change everyone wants to see and turn that meeting into an email.
