The 75% Meeting

Domain: Execution - Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

How long do most of your projects take? Typically as much time as you are given.

This is Parkinson's law, often framed as "work expands to fill the time available for its completion".

Meetings are a great example of Parkinson's law. How many times have you thought "this should be a quick meeting. Hopefully we get some time back." only to have the meeting drag-out for the full time.

It happens constantly.

People become less focused, make more small talk and bring-up off-topic items "while we're here".

There's a lot of meeting strategies to combat this but one of my favorite is the "75% meeting".

The idea of the 75% meeting is that you are condensing standard meeting times down to 75%. So a one-hour meeting becomes 45 minutes. A 30 minute meeting becomes 20.

Now before you math wizards email me, I am aware that 75% of a 30 minute meeting is not 20 minutes. It's 22.5 minutes. But that's too much of a pain to schedule, so we round. In this case, I prefer to round down to create more free time.

These meetings give everyone, not just you, some time back. They also forces you to be more effective in the meeting by focusing on the main topics in order to address them in a shorter time. This sends valuable signals to your team about effectiveness, discipline and respecting one-another's time.

Here are a few strategies for implementing the 75% meeting in your organization…

Heads up

Before you start scheduling these meetings, you want to share with your team and other attendees what you are doing. Most importantly, share the why. Let them know that you're trying to make meetings more efficient and create space between appointments.

Adjust

Once you've communicated the change and addressed any questions, make the adjustment. As new meetings come-up, schedule them for the condensed time.

But don't stop there. This is also the time to update any reoccurring meetings already on the calendars. Your team will start taking notice once they see existing meetings being shortened.

How you shorten each meeting is completely up to you. You choose how to shave the time. Either the beginning of the meeting, the end or both. I prefer shaving from the end so that people can work on immediate action items before their next meeting.

However you do it, I recommend being consistent in your approach. If you shave time off the end of meetings, try to do that for all.

Purpose and outcome

Once the meetings are adjusted, the easy part is done. Now you need to focus your attention on being more effective during the meetings in order to get the same work done in a shorter window.

One of my early articles gives advice on prep work for better meetings. I'd suggest starting there. Specifically, you want to be very clear on the purpose and desired outcomes of each meeting. Is there a decision that needs to be made? Is there a complicated message for which you expect lots of questions? Does a brainstorming session need to happen?

Make sure the purpose and outcomes align with your team's objectives. If the meeting doesn't require collaboration or a big decision, it may not be necessary to meet at all.

Don’t go over

The new duration will take some getting used to and you are likely to run out of time when you start. That's fine, but don't extend the meeting. End on time. This will force you and the team to learn how to adjust to the new routine.

If you reach the end of the meeting and need further discussion, you'll need to schedule a separate meeting. That other meeting should also follow the 75% rule.

Doing this is harder than it sounds. Your team may say, "I'm free the next 15 minutes, let's just wrap-up". That's tempting, but if you get in the habit of doing that your 45 minute meetings quickly revert back to one hour.

A little pain the short-term is worth the return that you'll see when you and your team get used to being more effective in a shorter time.

Use it wisely

Once you've done this, you can reclaim hours back in your day.

Don't let that time go to waste. There's no sense in going through all this effort to be more effective only to go back to your desk and work on a low-value task such as email. So many leaders make this mistake.

I recommend using the newly acquired free-time to work on immediate action items. If you have none, then look at your top priorities for the day and see if there's anything you can do to move them forward before your next meeting.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

1. If you are ready to implement 75% meetings, communicate it to your team and stakeholders prior to doing so.

2. Once communicated, update all existing meetings to the condensed duration.

3. Follow my advice on effective meeting standards to ensure your team is focused on high-value outcomes.

4. Start on time, end on time. Avoid the temptation to extend the meeting in the moment.

5. Use your reclaimed time to work on immediate deliverables or high-priority items.