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Business Correspondent
“When people have nothing to do and are looking for an excuse as to why they didn’t get their work done, they call for a meeting. Meeting yei? What are we meeting for?
We’ve got to discuss this national tragedy of endless meetings!” asserts Ambassador Kwame Muzawazi, chief executive officer of the Institute of African Knowledge, in a short video that has been doing the rounds on social media since last week revealed.
Though somewhat humorous, the clip deals with a serious issue, something Mr Muzawazi calls a “national tragedy” because of its adverse impact on productivity and thus the national economy.
“You call 10 people in this country right now, nine of them are going to tell you, ‘I’m in a meeting.’ Executives in the private sector, directors in Government — it’s like they are employed to go and attend meetings. Ninety-five percent of their day is in a meeting. When do we get the work done? Tichashanda rini?
“And you get into that meeting and you ask: ‘Imeeting yei?’ Most of the time you find it is just a meeting to talk about the last meeting. And as if that is not enough, the resolution from that meeting will be a date for the next meeting. Meeting yei? What are we meeting for?”
To meet or not to meet?
The video has stirred debate on social media platforms with people discussing Zimbabwe’s work culture, more so when the Government is pushing the Vision 2030 target of creating an upper-middle-income society.
But does this mean that meetings should be shelved? Can an organisation, especially one with a profit motive, function without meetings?
“Information sharing is the lifeblood of organisational planning and activities,” noted one Zimbabwean on a social media platform as he commented on the video in question. “We cannot expect any organisation — big or small — to operate viably if its leaders and functionaries do not meet to plan, share information and develop ideas and strategies.
However, if the meetings do not result in the sharing of critical information for the effective implementation of plans, then they become meaningless.”
Another comment was: “Meetings should be structured and geared towards productive outcomes, without using up too much time. Meetings are essential as long as they bring together the necessary people who can give relevant feedback and strategies on key result areas.
The problem in Zimbabwe is that we love meeting for the sake of meeting. Bosses call meetings so that they just rant at workers, just to show them who the boss is. That is a waste of time and only serves to kill morale.”
The same person went on to say: “Where is the logic in endless planning sessions while productivity suffers? In such a case, which is something that happens all too often in our companies here, we have to introspect on Mr Muzawazi’s question: meeting yei?”
The importance of these submissions is that for some managers, supervisors and even shop-floor workers, productivity is measured by how many meetings have been held, rather than any scientific measurement of implementation of the outcomes of those meetings.
Cost of meetings
Then there is the cost of convening meetings. Whether held at the work station or people have to drive for 30 minutes to a venue or get on an airplane to fly to another country, there is an economic cost which can easily be calculated by looking at travel, accommodation, venue and food expenses, as well as lost production time.
An article published by The Harvard Business Review “The high cost of not paying attention”, citing research by Bain & Company, estimates that unproductive meetings cost American businesses US$37 billion a year.
That is 50 percent higher than Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product. A study by Atlassian says all meetings — whether productive or not — cost the US economy $399 billion per year.
It is difficult to find a local study on the cost of unproductive meetings (which could be an indicator of the lack of importance for Zimbabwe attaches to this vital aspect of the work culture), but even if they cost the national economy US$100 million per annum, that is US$100 million the country can ill-afford to lose.
Cal Newport, a professor at Georgetown University and author of “Deep Work” and “A World Without Email”, has conducted extensive research on the effects of meetings on productivity.
He says too many meetings can lead to a phenomenon he refers to as “hyperactive hive mind”; this is when employees constantly switch between tasks as they try to keep up with the several issues that arise from having numerous meetings.
In the process, the employee actually gets less work done even as he/she appears to be very busy. Prof Newport has found that having fewer meetings creates a work environment in which employees focus on “deep work” and produce more.
Newport’s research says the average formal employee spends 31 hours per month in meetings, which is equivalent to two full weeks per year of sitting in meetings. He also says the average length meetings have increased by about 50 percent since the 1970s.
Tellingly, the findings indicate that the majority of people who are called to attend meetings report that 50 percent of the meetings they attend are unproductive and a waste of time.
Another study in the Journal Productivity Analysis “The impact of meetings on productivity: An empirical analysis of individual-level productivity” found that meetings could have a negative impact on employee productivity and motivation.
Capping meetings
In advanced economies, governments and private companies are increasingly tackling the issue of meetings by implementing policies and strategies that prioritise productivity.
Since 2014, LinkedIn has had a “no meeting Wednesday” policy, and the company reports that employee output actually rises on that day. The company says employees are in general more productive, have higher morale, and participate better in the meetings that they do have to attend.
Social media management company Buffer has a “no meeting Monday policy” so that employees focus on individual creative work at the start of the week. This could be more productive than the traditional Monday “planning meeting”, which usually turns out to be a management ego trip in which little real planning is actually done. Netflix, Basecamp, and Doist all have unique meeting-related policies that have positively impacted work culture and productivity.
Then there is the issue of after-hours in-person and virtual meetings.
The French government has introduced the “right to disconnect” law, which empowers workers to “disconnect” from their bosses after hours. This incentivises supervisors to ensure contractual work hours are highly productive.
Meeting for feasting
Mr Muzawazi also raises the issue of the health costs of endless meetings.
“Look around at the tables — full of sweets, chocolate, sugar, those soda drinks. And then you wonder why cancer is a very big killer in the cities. It’s because we are eating unhealthy foods. In those eight hours that we spend in meetings, we are just consuming soda after soda, sugar after sugar — the most unhealthy foods tiri mu mameeting.”
Again, there are no scientific studies available in Zimbabwe on the health cost of the junk consumed at meetings (unproductive meetings at that), but anecdotal evidence and simple observation attest to what Mr Muzawazi is raising. Surely there are personal healthcare costs, while companies incur the costs of an unhealthy workforce, and the national economy has to foot the bill of increased cancer in the populace.
So what is to be done?
“This is a national tragedy that deserves to be fought with the same amount of energy as we gave to Covid-19. We should consider regulating meetings: when, why you should have meetings and actually how you should have meetings,” says Mr Muzawazi.
Online Reporter