Welcome to article four of six in my mini-series exploring strategic continuous improvement tools. Last week I examined Leader Standard Work. One of the building blocks of Standard Work in an organisation is effective meetings which I will be exploring this week. 

The Meeting Problem

Meetings have grown steadily in both frequency and length over the past five decades. Research published in the Harvard Business Review found that managers now spend around 23 hours per week in meetings, more than double the figure from a generation ago.

Anecdotally, this is the single biggest frustration I hear from leaders. Time is swallowed up, fatigue compounds across the day and the week, there is no space to carry out actions or think clearly about problems, and by Friday afternoon rational thought has all but evaporated.

What is a Meeting Actually For?

It is the leader’s job to decide how many meetings are needed, who should attend, how long they should run, and what they should cover. Too often, meetings emerge organically, decided by individuals and departments with no broader meeting strategy and they quietly build a structure of their own inside the organisation.

From a Lean process perspective, a meeting should be short, focused, and structured to drive action against organisational objectives by aligning key stakeholders. The bulk of the thinking should happen outside the meeting with the meeting itself a confirmation and alignment of next steps.

Challenge the 30-Minute Default

Meetings built in 30-minute blocks are building in waste from the start. An effective meeting that needs 12 minutes should take 12 minutes. One that needs 37 minutes should take 37. Well-planned meetings have their own natural length. And I would question whether any meeting genuinely needs to exceed one hour, beyond that, you are simply engineering fatigue into diaries.

Designing a Meeting Cascade

There are broadly two types of meetings in any organisation: planned, recurring meetings and unplanned meetings convened to resolve a specific issue or problem. Getting control of the first category starts with designing a meetings cascade, a simple matrix with meeting frequency on one axis and meeting type on the other.

An example meeting cascade is shown below, for example for a division or organisational site.

Simply building this matrix can reveal some ‘aha’ moments as to why certain moments take place, whether some can be combined and also allows information flow between meetings to be thought about. Columns for meeting length, facilitator, and attendees can be added once the structure is agreed.

Once overall structure is decided, then each and every meeting should have a terms of reference covering the key areas below.

A consistent format across all meetings means that anyone new can quickly understand their role and how each meeting connects to others in the cascade.

Unplanned Meetings

Unplanned does not mean unstructured. The time of the people attending is just as valuable as in any scheduled meeting. All unplanned meetings should be problem-solving events, whether the issue is technical, commercial, or people-related and everyone in the organisation should be trained in effective problem-solving techniques so that the time spent is genuinely value-adding.

Final Thoughts

Meetings are one of the most consistently neglected levers in an effective Lean operation. Designed well, they unlock significant time across the organisation and, perhaps counterintuitively, give people energy rather than draining it. The goal is not fewer meetings for its own sake, but the right meetings: short, focused, and worth turning up to. 

In next week’s article, I’ll be exploring Lean Audits, looking at how effective audit systems create insight, accountability and continuous momentum for improvement across your organisation.

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