I recently re-discovered an inspiring post by Marco Mattei, a former colleague at Ericsson. Although it is a few years old, the message remains of the utmost relevance for almost any large corporation. It raises fundamental questions: How long do we spend sitting in meetings? Is being busy the same as being productive?
This topic resonates with most managers who must establish a governance structure for their teams. We must balance frequent check-ins to learn and guide without occupying too much time for the team or ourselves. Leaders often struggle with the right format: 1:1 sessions, team meetings, or separating operational tasks from KPI reviews. While there is no single “best” option, we must ensure we are not wasting our most valuable resource: time.
The Trap of the Workload Generator
You cannot get rid of meetings entirely, but you should not spend half of your time in them. You must also be careful not to flood the agendas of your team members. I fully share several conclusions from the original article:
- Avoid the “Workload Generator” trap: A visionary leader may introduce valid new ideas but this may also drown the team with “what-if” scenarios and deep-dive analyses without realizing the effort required behind the scenes.
- Prioritize “Directionally Correct” decisions: It is better to push for a decision that is directionally correct rather than waiting for a perfect one. I have **shared my thoughts on this previously** because I believe this is a significant time-changer if you want things to happen quickly.
- Foster Communication and Transparency: Be open to receiving feedback about your meeting setup. Build your governance structure with your team and find the right balance together. Do not be afraid to change anything that is not working as expected.
Assessing the Value of Preparation
I try to keep two specific questions in mind when scheduling a recurring meeting:
- How long does my team need to prepare for this weekly or monthly meeting?
- What is the added value of that preparation?
A typical recurring meeting usually involves a KPI Review. This is essential because KPIs drive performance and ensure progress toward a goal. However, my first red light appears when the preparation for the meeting involves the manual calculation of the KPI itself.
Shifting from Data Crunching to Data Analysis
Calculation should be as automatic as possible. The preparation time should be spent understanding why a KPI has a certain value and planning actions related to it.
Years ago, I worked in a very dynamic facility where we followed KPIs in daily accountability meetings every morning. Every member of my team spent 30 to 45 minutes every day preparing their numbers. They had to download reports from the ERP, transform the data, filter for their specific scope, and summarize it into a single figure.
This manual process left them no room to understand the data before the meeting. Consequently, our discussions were limited to “this is going better” or “this is going worse,” which provided very little added value.
We eventually changed that process to an automatic PowerBI report. One person would download the reports from the ERP, and the software handled all transformations and provided details behind the numbers. The team still spent 30 to 45 minutes preparing for the meeting, but that time was now used to understand the “why” behind the figures. This allowed them to set their own priorities for the day instead of just being busy with data crunching.
Our Responsibility as Managers
As managers, we have a significant responsibility to create value. The higher an individual is in an organization, the more responsibility they hold, as these dynamics flow down through every level of the hierarchy. As Marco puts it in his blog, we must start generating amazing outcomes and not just more work.
How much of your team’s meeting preparation time is spent on manual “busy work” versus actual strategic analysis?
Leave a Reply