Werkcollege 1 & 2
ARTIKEL 1: WASTED TIME AND MONEY IN MEETINGS: INCREASING
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Most organizations devote between 7% and 15% of their personnel budgets to meetings.
Wasted time in meetings:
Direct monetary cost in the form of salary and benefit dollars associated with participants’ time.
+ indirect costs: opportunity costs => time lost that could be used to do more productive activities,
employee stress and fatigue, job dissatisfaction and less organizational commitment.
Meeting recovery syndrome= time spent cooling off due to frustration. a related demand is time
spent making retrospective sense of what transpired and what is means. (een verwante eis is de tijd
die wordt besteed aan het achteraf begrijpen van wat er is gebeurd en wat dat betekent)
Too few meetings: costs that are less tangible (tastbaar) but no less important. When meetings are
well facilitated, employees tend to want more of them. Groups and organizations that have too few
meetings, particularly regarding topics about which employees may feel anxious, run the risk of:
- Depriving (ontnemen) employees of needed information and insight, thus heightening
uncertainty
- Diminishing key employee attitudes like job satisfaction, communication satisfaction,
organizational identification and turnover intentions.
3 stage model for systemically diagnosing and working to improve the use and effectiveness of
meetings at work:
1. Stage 1: asses the organization’s investment in meetings
Ask employees to document the number of meetings attended an time spent in those
meetings. + salary information = investment in meetings can be calculated by person, unit,
division, or the entire organization by day or week.
Every organisation should have some sense of their meetings investment, just as they
monitor other organizational expenses.
2. Stage 2: Asses return on meeting investment
Start with collecting data on meeting effectiveness. Estimates of meeting effectiveness can
be derived in 2 principal ways and using both methods together is ideal to minimize
measurement biases.
1) Employees complete a survey reporting on effectiveness and value of meetings attended
2) Trained observers internal or external to the organization attend a broad sampling of
meeting and after conducting follow-up interviews, proved estimates of overall meeting
effectiveness and value of group meetings.
, 3. Stage 3: formulate and implement a change strategy
Meeting norms – expectations regarding the purpose, content, structure, and timing of
meetings as well as the role of participants – can vary widely across cultures.
Change strategy components:
1) Build feedback and accountability systems for groups
2) Create high-fidelity training and leader development systems. (Creëren van systemen
voor opleiding en ontwikkeling van leiders met een hoog getrouwheidsgehalte.)
3) Establish productive cultural practices
(a) Increase feedback and accountability:
To motivate performance and promote positive change, employees and group leaders need
to receive feedback on their performance in meeting. This feedback can be monitored so
that there is accountability for poor performance in meetings and recognition for good
performance in meetings.
Performance appraisal performance (systeem voor prestatiebeoordeling) with job relevant
dimensions (one dimension should focus on effective meeting leadership and participation.)
(b) Training/leadership development:
Basic classroom training focused on the design of effective meetings (use of agendas, time
management).
Many managers believe that their group meetings skills are above average. -> more
individual based training is needed where the manager is either coached directly by someone
who observes their behaviour in meetings or by having managers go through a development
assessment center that addresses meeting activities.
(c) Introduction a strategic meeting design
Focus into a organization’s culture
A strategic meeting design focus refers to sensitizing the organizational population that time
in group work meetings is an investment that should be carefully managed. Cultural practices
can then be designed to support the effective use of meetings.
Een strategische focus op het ontwerpen van vergaderingen verwijst naar het bewust maken
van de organisatiebevolking dat tijd in groepsvergaderingen een investering is die zorgvuldig
beheerd moet worden. Culturele praktijken kunnen dan worden ontworpen om het effectief
gebruik van vergaderingen te ondersteunen.
Amazon two pizza guidline 😉
Conclusie: meetings zijn niet noodzakelijk iets slechts of engs, maar het moet gezien worden als iets
een organisatorisch fenomeen dat actief gemanaged moet worden.
,ARTIKEL 2: MEETINGS MATTER: EFFECTS OF TEAM MEETINGS ON
TEAM AND ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCES
Better meetings -> higher productivity -> organizational success 2,5 years after the meeting.
Dysfunctional communication (criticizing others, complaining) -> significant negative relationships
with these outcomes.
Negative effects even more pronounced than the positive effects
Team meetings processes shape both team and organizational outcomes
Traditional input-process-output model of team performance:
Input: team members’ personalities, group size, financial incentives
Process: planning and monitoring behaviours, interpersonal team processes -> managing conflict,
management or increasing team members’ commitment
Outcomes: productivity, team member satisfaction, meeting effectiveness
Group interaction is viewed as a central component for predicting team outcomes!!!
- Problem focused communication:
Understanding the issue, finding appropriate solutions, evaluating those solutions.
Thorough definition and analysis of the problem.
Hypothesis 1: problem focused communication will be positively linked to team meetings
success ACCEPTED
- Procedural communication:
Task contingent (taakgebonden) structuring and organizing the discussion.
Positive: help promote more functional discussion by inhibiting dysfunctional behaviors
(complaining)
Negative: lead to a loss of thought as a result of long monologues and redundant
(overbodige) explanations by individual participants
Hypothesis 2a: positive procedural statements will be positively linked to team success
Hypothesis 2b: negative procedural statements will be negatively linked to team succes
ACCEPTED
- Socioemotional communication:
Relational interaction in teams
Positive: showing solidarity, releasing tension, agreeing. -> team requirement, help flexibility
and creative problem solving
Negative: relationship conflict. Lower team performance. Side conversations as sign of
disinterest in the team interaction.
Hypothesis 3a: positive socioemotional statements will be positively linked to team success
Hypothesis 3b: negative socioemotional statements will be negatively linked to team success
REJECTED
, - Action-oriented communication:
A teams’ willingness to take action to improve their work. Proactive behaviour.
Communicating interest in change, taking responsibility of change ahead, planning concrete
actions.
But counteractive communication -> teams who lack initiative, interest developed poor
solutions. Complaining, seeking others to blame, denying responsibility wasted meeting time.
Hypothesis 4a: proactive statements will be positively linked to team success
Hypothesis 4b: counteractive statements will be negatively linked to team success.
ACCEPTED
Team meetings outcomes:
1) Participants’ meeting satisfaction
2) Team performance
3) Organizational success: difficult to link lower level teams’ performance to organizational
success. Connection is less clear.
ARTIKEL 3: DO WE REALLY NEED ANOTHER MEETING? THE SCIENCE
OF WORKPLACE MEETINGS
The science of meetings
= Systematic study of what occurs before, during, and after meetings; the outcomes of meetings; and
how meetings fit within broader organizational contexts.
- Before the meeting:
(1) Is de meeting noodzakelijk?
(2) Wie moet aanwezig zijn?
- During the meeting:
High performers contribute more than low performers by helping to set goals, facilitating group
understanding of work problems and seeking feedback. Expert employees (highly functional in a
given area) contribute more than nonexperts.
People who participate in a meeting by bringing up problems relating to poor work processes or
performance feel less negative about their work a day after the meeting
<-> when a person starts complaining in a meeting by expressing ‘killer phrases’ (reflect futility or an
unchangeable state. ‘Nothing can be done about that issue’ or ‘nothing works’), other attendees
begin to complain, which start a complaining cycle that can reduce work outcomes.
Humour and laughter patterns in meeting interactions seem to stimulate positive meeting behaviours
(praising others, encouraging people to participate, proposing solutions to problem)
Facilitator is responsible for setting a clear purpose at the meeting and following the agenda during
the meeting to ensure that it stays on track.
Meeting leaders should be equipped to recognize dysfunctional behaviours and intervene at the
appropriate time to refocus the meeting
