Director’s Thoughts – 4/25/25

Let’s talk meetings. I feel like the higher up you go in an organizational structure, the more time you spend in meetings! And right now, I feel like the majority of time I’m spending at work is in meetings. Whether they’re all productive is something we’ll get into. For example, I had eight scheduled meetings this week – not necessarily a lot, but once you start adding up the hours, you realize how much time to takes out of your work day. Thankfully, this week’s scheduled meeting were either in-person at my library or were virtual which at least cut out driving time!

Meeting Productivity

I think everyone at this point has seen some variation of the meme “This could have been an email!” and I’m right there with you, I hate wasting 1-2 hours in a meeting that easily could have been a well-written organized email. A well-crafted email about specific policy or procedure allows staff time to review the content, see how it applies to their work, and to follow-up with any questions. As a visual learner, I really love having a paper trail or something to refer back to when I need more information. If the same information was given verbally in a meeting, I would have to take notes, hope they were clear enough for me to understand at a later point and be able to find them easily when I needed them.

In-Person or Virtual

Since COVID, virtual meetings have become more and more common. And for some organizations, virtual meetings are completely necessary for their organization due to office locations. Being in a library is a little different in that I’m a director at a single library. All of my staff work in the building. While I do have a large contingent of staff who are part-time making meetings difficult to schedule, I don’t necessarily have to travel or create virtual meetings for my organization.

But, I do work with a larger consortium and the conversation of in-person and virtual meetings is a regular issue. Taking additional time during the day to travel to get to the meeting and then back to the library adds more time away from my office and the work I have to do. But, on the other hand, I find in-person meetings, if run well, can be much more productive than virtual meetings, especially with a larger group.

I think in-person meetings allow for some additional interaction among meeting goers that you can’t replicate in a virtual meeting. In a virtual meeting, I can’t chitchat with my colleague sitting next to me. I can’t find out how their library is doing something without disrupting the entire meeting for a side conversation that may or may not be pertinent to the agenda. I really think that interaction is extremely helpful and not something you’ll get out of a virtual meeting.

Virtual

On the other hand, small group meetings over Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever software you use can be extremely productive. Again, if you have to meet with people that aren’t close geographically, video calls and meetings, I think, are much better than a phone call, and with technology allowing you to share screens and content across platforms, this can lend itself to ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Unfortunately, regardless of the method you choose, I think a lot of people get distracted by emails coming in on their phone or laptop, scrolling Instagram, messaging other people in the meeting, whatever it is. How can you make sure meetings are a good use of time and don’t waste the time of people in attendance?

Make It Better

So how can we make meetings better? How do ensure that meetings aren’t wasting time and are actually worth the time to attend and spend the time to focus on. There are dozens of articles available that talk about this very issue and most have the same things to say.

Meeting Tips

1. Send out any pre-work with enough lead time
   If a meeting requires meeting goers to prepare anything, make sure you’re taking into account their other work duties and giving them enough time to gather the data or do the research required for the meeting.
2. Assign a time limit
   Don’t assume a meeting will just automatically wrap after an hour or two hours. Make sure when you set the meeting and the agenda that you let people know how long you expect the meeting to be. No one is going to be upset if a meeting is shorter than the amount of time on the schedule, but you’ll definitely hear about it, if it runs too long.
3. Stick to an agenda
   This is probably the hardest part for a lot of meeting groups. As we call it in some of my meetings, don’t get in the weeds. One of us will often throw up the ASL sign for the letter “W” if we think we’re getting too off topic. When you go off topic, you run the risk of going over the assigned time limit and not sticking to the items that need to be discussed during the meeting you’re in. Maybe as your meeting progresses you realize you need to set up another meeting about a specific issue, that’s find, but don’t try to squeeze another meeting into the one you’re already in.
4. A clear list of participants
   Make sure that the people invited to the meeting actually need to be there. Don’t waste people’s time if they can receive an email with the result or have no stake in the meeting whatsoever. It’s a waste of their time and yours. Especially if they need time to catch up to speed with everyone else and you have to take time from the group to do so.
5. Actionable next steps
   Always end the meeting with a review of actionable next steps and who is assigned to them. What needs to be done? Who is doing it? And when should it be accomplished?
6. Follow through
   And finally, follow through. Schedule the next meeting, or follow-up on action items individually, however you decide to do it, make sure the meeting participants know what’s going to happen and when.

Hopefully, as a setter of meetings, you can ensure that you’re not wasting staff time with meetings that aren’t necessary and as a meeting goer, your meetings are productive and useful to you! Good luck!