Meetings Could Be Destroying Your Culture

Smart credit union leaders know it’s essential to have an organizational culture where employees are engaged, productive and enthusiastic about achieving results. In order for this to happen, the top 50 leaders need to be aligned on what the organizational culture embodies. When senior leadership models the right behaviors and takes action designed to create and maintain engagement, the culture, productivity and results are strengthened.

Senior leadership must see to it that the culture’s health and employee engagement is tracked, understood and managed. Actions affecting culture must be based on fact, not on “the gut feeling” of senior managers, which is often quite wrong.  A myriad of approaches to data gathering and analysis can be used to assemble information about culture and engagement. Increasingly sophisticated analytics using company data, like email traffic and recorded calendar events, can be used to gain insight into individual behaviors and organizational habits. Regular employee surveys and data collection can now track culture almost in real time. This availability of data opens new frontiers for understanding culture and leads to informed actions to increase engagement.

Studies that include a broad range of companies showed that low-hanging fruit for improving engagement revolves around the times when employees gather together, i.e., the business meeting. The best meetings support employee engagement. For example, one-on-one conversations between a supervisor and an employee add an important dimension for understanding, mentoring and coaching. When done well and regularly, at least weekly, they increase engagement and drive performance. Small group brainstorming sessions can fire up employees and inspire them to innovate and create. Management briefings and company seminars are important tools for disseminating strategic information to employees at large, and they let everyone realize they are on the same team. These large gatherings should be used sparingly, with concise, clear, targeted messaging.

Yet, while conducting effective meetings seems straightforward, studies indicate that it is actually problematic, particularly for senior leaders. Poorly managed meetings can be dampening employee engagement. Studies by MIT Sloan, internal analyses at Microsoft, and Gallup surveys all told that the wrong kind of meetings occur too often and drag down productivity and engagement. Moreover, Gallup reported that time lost in ineffective meetings costs U.S. businesses $37 billion a year, and senior leaders are part of the problem. On average, senior executives spend over two days per week in meetings, even though they thought two-thirds of the meetings used their time poorly.

Microsoft found that employee disaffection in one of its key engineering divisions was traced to time wasted in large meetings, which division leaders held for “coordination.” Unproductive meetings were crowding out productive work time forcing employees to make up the wasted time on weekends and evenings. And the department leadership’s “coordination” sessions displaced small gatherings focused on innovative creative brainstorming that generated enthusiasm. The type of experience at Microsoft occurs at many other companies. MIT Sloan found that engaged employees with a strong desire to complete their work goals had their satisfaction decreased as the number of meetings attended increased.

Such statistics and anecdotal evidence should make senior leadership concerned about being part of the problem reducing employee engagement. Actions to address such behaviors starts with the facts. A great place to begin is with an analysis of the behaviors of top executives around meetings to learn how they affect engagement either positively or negatively. Data replaces gut instinct in developing accurate information about behaviors. Analyzing your credit union’s meeting management culture is a good jumping off point for a more in-depth analyses around engagement. Collect and compile this data confidentially so it can result in effective analysis and actionable recommendations on how to create more productive individual and organizational habits.

Here are a few recommendations to help adopt common practices for meeting management that will improve your culture:

• Think through the meeting process and prepare in advance as a facilitator.
• Create and send focused agendas with a clear meeting purpose in advance so that attendees can prepare and participate.
• Ensure the right people are in meetings and only invite people who are needed.

Leadership’s behaviors have a significant and far-reaching effect on culture. Their actions filter throughout the organization and employees emulate these actions. Something seemingly so simple, like how management handles meetings, can have a vast impact on engagement, productivity and the achievement of desired results.

Stuart R. Levine is Chairman and CEO for Stuart Levine & Associates and EduLeader LLC. He can be reached at 516-465-0800 or slevine@stuartlevine.com.