The Future of Meetings
There is an ongoing inflation, a meeting
inflation.
The latest development in IT as well as the recent, urgent demand to continue to communicate and run businesses despite isolation and lock-downs has led to some significant advances and change in how we meet. It is now possible to hold and attend meetings without
extensive travelling which is much more sustainable for the environment
and less time consuming.
But, not having to leave our desks to go to a meeting, or from one to another, also gives us more
time for… more meetings. Fresh numbers show that the number of meetings we are
in during a day have grown extremely during the pandemic. According to Microsoft, the average user
saw a 252% increase in the amount of time spent in meetings each week between
2020 and 2021. Also indicating that this is not all good, is a global in-depth survey by Asana Inc
2021, where 10 000 workers across the world reports that more than 55%
of their day is lost to work coordination, rather than the actual tasks they had been hired to do. Harvard Business Review reported in March 2022 that 92% of employees consider meetings costly and unproductive.
Is
a digital meeting really sustainable if it is not efficient?
Companies lose billions every year on
inefficient meetings and the quality of meetings have not developed
exponentially in pace with the role they play in business- and project-success
today. We need to stop having unnecessary meetings and inefficient meetings. With so many people working remote we need to remember that digital meetings can be just as exhausting and can lead to zoom fatigue. Just because we can go from one meeting to another in a one minute, doesn't mean we should. In a sustainable meeting culture, we need to separate the "need to meet" from work related meetings, and remember to plan time for meeting preparations. A new development according to Microsoft is that people has started to plan "no meeting slots" in their meeting calendars.
Meetings are important. They’re the means through which collaboration and cooperation can take root and a project or goal is accomplished in the best way possible. But from the numbers above we can conclude that the inflation in meetings also mean a lot of people in a lot of bad meetings. A bad business meeting is one that lacks purpose. Nobody enjoys meeting for meeting’s sake, and therefore a meeting without a clear objective is frustrating for everybody involved as well as a very bad investment of time and resources.
Bad meetings is said to be the most underestimated business problem of our time and at PMI Sweden we recognise this as a major and interesting issue and decided to dedicate our next year's Passion for Projects Congress entirely to the Future of Meetings.
What is PMI's and our members' role,
reason, challenges and possibilities to drive this development?
It is crucial for all organisations and projects to have a sustainable meeting culture with productive, engaging and efficient meetings. Therefore it is a
top priority for us at PMI to build awareness, competence and knowledge in this field including:
Meeting
Culture, Meeting Management, Meeting
Technology
Meet us
at Space in Stockholm 13-14 March in a big meet about the future of meetings. Listen to thought leaders, scientists,
futurists, experts, HR proffessionals and communication experts talking about the development of meetings. Try out different meeting formats, technique and tools and build your meeting management competence in sessions
facilitated by leading certified trainers and practisioners in this field. Learn from experienced Project Managers sharing their lessons learned.
We want you to feel inspired, motivated, equipped and ready to drive the future of meetings when the congress comes to an end.
And of course we want you to mingle, network and have a really good time, so do not miss the party on Monday evening.
Best Regards,
The Passion for Projects Congress 2023 team