Do You Have a Meeting Addiction? Find Out Here

If we asked you, ideally, how many meetings you’d like to attend in any given week, what would you say? Five? Ten? Or perhaps it would be zero? 

According to the Harvard Business Review, corporate professionals spend, on average, 23 hours per week in meetings, with this time increasing between 8-10% every year since the year 2000. To make matters worse, only 30% of these meetings are actually productive.

Yet in spite of this, we, as procurement professionals, still love meetings. Put your hand up if you attended a check-in this week? Perhaps a procurement all-in? Or maybe you had a RFP debrief? Whatever it was, we bet that you attended. So why is that? 

The interesting thing about meetings is that even though we know they’re not always productive , and also that sometimes we’re simply not really needed, we still attend them. But unfortunately, this may not be good for us, as it can lead to increased hours or even burnout.

So, if you’re worried about the number of meetings you attend, it might pay to understand why you attend them all. Here’s a look into the psychological reasons we attend so many meetings and what you might be able to do to challenge your thinking and potentially cut down on the number of meetings you attend. 

Meeting FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out)

We’ve all heard of FOMO. It’s that feeling that something exciting might be happening, but we’re totally out of the action. Interestingly, it’s a significant reason we attend too many meetings. 

Has this ever happened to you? You’re not sure if you are really needed at a meeting, but you’re worried that your procurement colleagues will judge you or forget about you if you don’t accept every invitation. 

Unfortunately, while the nature of work may have changed, we often still equate presence with productivity, and sometimes, we worry that others will see attendance at meetings as a proxy for commitment, even if we’re not really achieving anything. 

To counter this fear, though, ensure that you demonstrate your value outside of meetings. 

If you’re a procurement meeting organiser, you can also help to alleviate people’s meeting FOMO. Remember: leaving someone out isn’t an insult if the meeting isn’t relevant to them. In fact, it’s more respectful to acknowledge when a meeting would waste their time. When organising a meeting, ensure that you ask for advice beforehand and check in with key stakeholders afterward to ensure they have the information they need without attending the entire conversation.

And finally, procurement people leaders and CPOs can help alleviate participants’ FOMO concerns by clearly communicating when an invitation is optional. After all, the most productive employees attend fewer meetings, so it’s crucial that you, as a procurement team, have other metrics to measure engagement and commitment. 

Egocentric Bias

Procurement people leaders and CPOs, this one’s aimed at you. Egocentric Bias, or the tendency to focus on our own needs, can lead to a selfish urgency, where procurement leaders schedule meetings that suit them, without considering the needs of their team. 

Naturally, people feel obligated to attend a meeting initiated by their manager, but what leaders might not realise is that scheduling a meeting means their team will miss out on more valuable work. As we all know, good intentions often get lost in the daily grind.

If you’re a procurement leader, it’s important to proactively remind yourself to consider the opportunity costs of meetings. For your team, these could be financial or personal costs, such as lost commute time or mental energy. Ever wondered what the cost of a meeting really might be? Try this handy calculator.

And remember: always schedule meetings in advance, find mutually convenient times, and consider shortening or cancelling meetings altogether if the meeting could just as easily be an email.

Unnecessary Commitment Check-ins

Have you attended a meeting this week where you had to report your progress? These meetings are occasionally justified, but many times they are not. Often,  we use meetings as commitment devices to ensure follow-through on promises. And while it can be motivating to know that you’ll have to publicly report where you’re up to with, say, an RFP, often this impacts no one but you (or, at the very least, the deadline for said RFP if your ultimate motivator and all anyone really cares about). 

If you’re the organiser of a ‘commitment/progress report’ meeting for your procurement team or other stakeholders, let everyone know that if everyone is on track, the meeting can be cancelled (thereby framing cancellation as a reward). 

If not everyone is on track for your project, the meeting may still be useful to discuss blockers. Alternatively, if everyone is on track, bar one person, work with that person individually to ensure they get back on track, rather than waste everyone else’s time with a meeting.

Human Error and Inability to Speak up

Ever got a sense of deja vu in a meeting? Unfortunately, sometimes we repeat meetings because we can’t remember what happened the first time. This is a surprisingly common phenomenon, especially in particularly busy environments such as procurements. 

There’s nothing worse than having to repeat yourself, though – it’s the antithesis of productivity. So, to avoid meeting repeats, ensure that you and your team debrief after key calls, and also send written instructions on important points. 

And finally, another reason why meetings are repeated, even when they feel pointless, is because literally no one has spoken up about how pointless they are. From a professional perspective, it can feel a little confronting to give feedback about meetings, but it’s necessary: often others will share your frustration about the meeting. 

If you’re a procurement leader, you can help with establishing a culture where giving feedback is ok. Encourage your team to give feedback openly, even asking, if possible, how they feel about meetings and which ones it might be possible to eliminate. 

We all feel differently about meetings, but regardless, they are part of life in procurement. But, from a productivity perspective, it’s important to consider why you are attending them and what you might be able to do to strike the right balance between meetings and your procurement work. 

How many meetings do you attend per week? Would you like to attend more or less? Let us know in the comments below.