71% of the meetings are not productive

Everyone who has worked in an office knows how detrimental it is to productivity when people have to interrupt their work a few times a day for a meeting about status updates, an email that has already been sent, or a colleague’s birthday. Efficient meetings are hard to come by in many companies.

Maybe you think that a few half-hour meetings throughout the day can’t hurt. So what should we do, not communicate sometimes?

That last question is addressed later on. However, a few short meetings throughout the day can indeed be harmful, as the following shows.

According to a recent Harvard Business Review survey of over 180 senior managers:

65% say they don’t get their own work done because of all the meetings.

71% find meetings unproductive and inefficient.

64% say meetings detract from serious thinking.

These unproductive meetings cost companies money.

But who is actually responsible for all those annoying, expensive, momentum-disrupting meetings?

You are.