Time well spent: 11 productivity hacks for team meetings

When you’re worried about significant issues like gaining more customers and growing revenue, unproductive meetings seem low on the list of things to fix. However, meetings can impact your people and your business.

Tangents, irrelevant updates and meandering or nonexistent agendas decrease meeting productivity and take time from meaningful activities.

In this article, you’ll learn 11 powerful ways to hold more productive meetings, save time throughout the week and create impactful meeting results.

The costs: how unproductive meetings hurt sales and growth

Excessive and unproductive meetings impact sales and business growth by diverting time and attention away from high-value tasks like closing deals or developing growth-driven strategies. Inefficient meetings take time away from critical work that moves the business forward.

Employees spend too many hours in meetings. In Atlassian’s survey of 5,000 knowledge workers, 78% of respondents said leaders expect them to attend so many meetings that it’s hard to get their work done.

Those meetings can be exhausting and hurt productivity, causing employees to work overtime. In fact, 51% of respondents said they had to work overtime a few days a week due to meeting overload.

In the same study, 76% of professionals cited feeling drained on workdays with many meetings.

This drain also impacts job performance and morale, eroding work-life balance. A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina found that an employee’s satisfaction with meetings could predict their overall job satisfaction.

When a meeting is unproductive, your team misses out on insights and clarity they would’ve received from one with a clear direction and focus. For example, a poorly structured meeting could delay a critical decision, causing your team to miss a time-sensitive market opportunity.

Frequent unproductive meetings waste time, chipping away at job satisfaction and hurting your business’s bottom line and growth potential.

11 best practices for running productive team meetings

There are many proven methods for boosting meeting productivity in your small business, from

creating a meeting agenda to weeding out unnecessary meetings.

Here are 11 powerful techniques to ensure your meetings produce reliable decisions and insights that can fuel your business.

1. Start measuring meeting productivity

The old saying “you can’t improve what you don’t measure” also applies to meeting productivity. With metrics, it’s easier to pinpoint the issues keeping your meetings from achieving the intended outcomes.

As a small business owner, you can track meeting metrics like revenue or sales. When the numbers fail to meet your objectives, you can find and fix the issue.

Here are four meeting performance metrics to start tracking:

• Time planned vs. time spent. Track how often your meetings start and end on time to learn where you’re wasting minutes or hours in every work week. Do this for individual agenda items as well.

• Attendance. Measure the attendance rate (attended divided by invited) and count tardiness. These metrics provide insight into how your employees view your meetings and may suggest meetings are unnecessary.

• Action items. Track completed action items from the last meeting and the number of new ideas generated. As a result, you’ll know if your meetings are helping your team get work done.

• Decisions made. Count the number of decisions made during the meeting. This metric helps you determine whether meeting discussions generate direction.

Tracking meeting metrics clues you into the problem and provides immediate feedback, helping you spot whether your solutions are working. If you rearrange the structure of your meetings and find they lead to more decisions and better attendance, for example, you know you’re on the right track.

2. Use a framework to decide if you should create a new meeting

When the opportunity to create a new meeting arises, you need a decision-making process to help determine if it should be an in-person gathering, an email or something else. After all, the easiest way to increase meeting productivity is to avoid creating unnecessary ones.

Spontaneous meetings cause a lot of lost time, usually generated by a quick “Hey, can you hop on a Zoom call in 10 minutes”?

Microsoft’s survey found that 62% of meetings are unscheduled. This approach interrupts workflow and causes employees stress as they try to keep up.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Below is a three-part framework to determine the best form of communication.

Step 1: Consider the reasons for holding any meeting

First, understand the primary reasons for holding a business team meeting:

• Sharing serious information that may bring up concerns, explanations or objections

• Planning that requires dynamic input and expertise from various team members

• Brainstorming and problem-solving where a multi-pronged approach prevails

• Holding discussions to produce an important decision and generate buy-in

• Building camaraderie between members and making them feel like part of the team

Knowing these types of team meetings gives you a metric to rule out other kinds. If a meeting’s purpose doesn’t fall within one of the categories, you should subject it to further scrutiny using the next step.

Step 2: Consider the implications of creating this new meeting

New meetings create additional strain on the workload. Ask yourself the following questions before creating or allowing a new meeting on the calendar:

• What are the consequences of not holding this meeting?

• Is there a faster way to distribute this information?

• If invited as a busy employee, was it a good meeting worth my time?

If the answers to these questions show another method is more productive, change your approach by employing the final step.

Step 3: Consider alternative ways to communicate

Finally, set some rules to determine if the meeting could involve an alternative, less disruptive form of communication. For example:

• Emails: Use these to share straightforward information, updates and announcements

• Chat tools: Use Slack and Teams for light brainstorming, time-sensitive questions about tasks and quick updates that don’t need tracking

• Video recording and podcast tools: Use Loom and Vidcast to provide context-based feedback (e.g., on a new sales proposal).

• Cloud-based collaboration tools: Leave comments and tag other users on Google Docs and Miro boards so team members can respond more conveniently.

Running through this framework will ensure your meetings are always productive.

3. Eliminate unnecessary recurring meetings

It’s typical to have at least one recurring meeting that people leave thinking, “This could’ve been an email.”

Identify wasteful meetings and decide whether to replace them with a faster, less intrusive form of communication held less frequently (e.g., weekly to biweekly).

An extreme example of this approach is Asana’s doomsday experiment, where nine team members deleted all meetings with five people or fewer from their calendars.

They then waited two days to add the meetings back, allowing time to consider if each meeting was necessary. Many recurring meetings never made it back on the calendar, and those that did were shorter. As a result of the experiment, each employee saved 11 hours per month.

Small businesses can run a similar meeting audit. To get you started, below are some types of meetings typically better off as chats or emails:

• Quick updates and general announcements: Inform your team about a small change to a strategy, team or process via email or chat.

• One-on-one dialogue: If a regular meeting only involves two people, like weekly check-ins between two sales and marketing managers, it can often become an asynchronous update.

• Feedback: Holding a meeting to give feedback on a document, sales pitch or strategy in real time is often unproductive; asynchronous communication can provide better feedback.

If you’re the meeting leader and find this week’s session will fall into one of the above categories, cancel it and use another form of communication. Your team will thank you.

4. Define clear objectives for each meeting

Without a clear goal, it’s hard to create a productive meeting. Attendees might be unprepared and less interested in participating if they don’t know the meeting’s purpose.

When you define objectives clearly and communicate them to attendees, meetings are more likely to be focused and engaging.

For example, if every attendee knows the goal of the meeting is to brainstorm new brand messaging, they’ll think about this topic beforehand and arrive with ideas.

Below are some tips for setting meeting objectives:

• Consider results: Aim to create tangible results (e.g., a key decision, a new sales script or 10 solid ideas for a product name). This way, you’ll end up with something of value.

• Align with organizational goals: Ensure your objectives serve your team and business growth goals so all meetings are stepping stones to success.

• Summarize the objectives clearly: Describe each objective in one sentence (e.g., “Review lost sales in Q3 and determine improvement points”). This will help everyone understand the purpose of the meeting.

• Share meeting objectives: Before the meeting, email the objectives along with your agenda and other important information.

While winging it may occasionally lead to spontaneous ideas, it’s often a recipe for unproductive meetings. Taking a few minutes to determine the “why” will generate more decisions, ideas and benefits for your business in less time.

5. Set a meeting agenda

A meeting agenda is a documented action plan that outlines the meeting's aim and structure. It tells your team what to do, when to do it and how long each section should take.

The agenda is the fastest route to the meeting’s overall objective. It keeps everyone on track and leads to more productive meetings.

According to MIT, a meeting agenda should contain the following six elements:

• Items: Define the topics of discussion or sections of the meeting (e.g., “Review and discuss the new pricing tiers”)

• Desired outcomes: Determine what you wish to achieve for each item (e.g., “Agree on the new pricing tiers”)

• Priorities: Assign each item a priority score, so if you’re running short on time, you can focus on the most important ones

• Time: Decide on a time limit for the meeting and each item to make things as efficient as possible

• Who: Determine which attendee handles each item and the outcome

• How: Pick the best approach to accomplish each objective (e.g., sharing around the table, asking a specific question to generate pointed feedback, brainstorming openly)

Here’s an example agenda for a 30-minute sales team meeting:

Distribute the agenda before the meeting so attendees can lead or contribute to each item.

6. Set a strict time limit

Keep your meetings short to retain attention. As a rule, McKinsey recommends holding 20-minute meetings with two agenda items; any longer and attention spans start to wane.

While 20-minute meetings may not be feasible for everyone, the keyword here is strict. Setting limits you stick to reduces time spent in team meetings while making them more efficient.

This effect is called fixed-schedule productivity, a concept coined by productivity expert Cal Newport when he was a graduate student in a demanding computer science program.

He found that to stick to his self-imposed 5 PM shutdown, he had to find ways to work smarter. For example, he dropped low-priority projects and found faster ways of doing things.

The same applies to meetings. When you know you only have 20 minutes to accomplish the objective, you create the best agenda possible, invite only the essential attendees, bring the meeting back on track when it strays and experiment with new structures or approaches.

In contrast, when time limits are flexible, you’re not incentivized to increase efficiency because you can always go 10 minutes over.

7. Limit attendance

Generally, the longer a meeting lasts, the more voices and opinions there are, so things can get disorganized quickly.

In fact, Doodle’s State of Meetings Report found that only 15% of two-person meetings lasted more than an hour, while meetings with 10 or more people lasted more than an hour 64% of the time.

Adding a person to a meeting dilutes the other members’ ownership, potentially making them less motivated to contribute. Internal meetings should include the minimum number of people to achieve the objective.

Karen M. Reed, author of Suddenly Virtual: Making Remote Meetings Work, says five to seven attendees is the sweet spot for decision-making meetings. The advice also applies to in-person and hybrid meetings.

While numerical ranges are helpful, the best way to ensure the correct number of people is the question: “How will this person contribute to the meeting objective?” Will they provide context? Bring essential domain expertise? Offer analytical or creative insight?

Ask this question when deciding who to invite, and you’ll have the ideal attendance number for the meeting.

8. Establish meeting protocols and ground rules

Rules and best practices can help you run more productive meetings and avoid bad habits. For example, meetings will run more smoothly if all attendees know to hold questions until the end of a presentation.

Below are some meeting rules to consider setting in stone:

• Use a “Parking Lot”: Note off-topic ideas or issues that arise, ensuring follow-up without derailing the main discussion.

• Mute when not speaking: Participants in remote meetings should mute their microphones to minimize background noise. They should also refrain from taking phone calls during the meeting.

• Encourage questions at specific times: Designate meeting time slots for Q&A to avoid interruptions during presentations or reports.

• Use visual aids when possible: Graphs or charts can clarify points quickly, reducing time spent explaining complex topics.

• Avoid talking over others: Interrupting other participants can stifle discussion and discourage quieter members from sharing their thoughts.

• Read reports in advance: Show up informed and ready to participate. Consider sales reporting software to create highly visual reports that are easy to digest.

Compile your rules into a document and share it with team members. Continue updating the list as you spot recurring bottlenecks to eliminate.

You can reference the document as needed without making employees feel guilty. Attendees who know the rules matter will act accordingly.

9. Schedule the meeting quickly

Even scheduling a meeting, which seems simple, can take a while. Finding a date and time that works for everyone can be difficult, especially if the participants are a large group of busy people across time zones.

Many small businesses use meeting scheduler software to prevent such issues. These tools streamline the process to ensure your meeting invites are informative and effective.

For example, Pipedrive’s meeting scheduler offers the following features:

• Shareable calendar link: Adjusts for the person’s time zone automatically

• Buffer times: Prevents meetings from overlapping with built-in buffer periods

• Video conferencing integration: Adds video links to scheduled calls automatically

• Calendar sync: Integrates with popular calendar tools to prevent double-booking

Using scheduler tools to automate the process can free up time to plan effective meetings that achieve your objectives.

10. Follow meeting leadership best practices

To further your education, learn fundamental leadership best practices. These techniques help you run more focused and productive meetings while boosting your influence as a manager.

Below are eight meeting leadership techniques to add to your repertoire:

• Set a professional example. Arrive on time, be prepared and respect the agenda to model the behavior you expect from your team.

• Stay neutral during discussions. Avoid showing favoritism toward specific ideas or individuals to encourage healthy, nuanced debate from all team members.

• Use technology wisely. Leverage digital tools for scheduling, note-taking and video conferencing to enhance communication and organization.

• Summarize key points regularly. Recap the main takeaways and action items at the end of each section to ensure clarity and accountability.

• Be mindful of different communication styles. Recognize and adapt to team members’ communication preferences to foster a more inclusive environment.

• Celebrate employee wins. Take a moment to acknowledge team achievements or milestones, boosting team morale and cohesion.

• Use a positive tone. Maintain an upbeat and encouraging tone to foster a collaborative atmosphere where everyone can speak honestly.

• Practice active listening. Show interest in others’ contributions by making eye contact and responding to their points with paraphrasing, questions and comments.

Focus on doing one technique each week to internalize them so they become automatic (A tactic Ben Franklin used to improve his character traits.)

Through this process, you’ll improve as a facilitator, and your meetings will be more productive.

11. Summarize key decisions and assign action items

To ensure the meeting leads to action, summarize key decisions and assign action items at the end of the meeting. Otherwise, people might leave without direction about what they’re supposed to do before the next meeting.

For example, if you determine at minute five of the meeting that a particular sales rep should focus on a territory using a new cold call script, you must remind them at the end.

Since memory is fleeting, send a post-meeting email defining decisions and conclusions. It should also assign tasks to individuals, preferably with instructions on achieving them. In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker said this habit was essential to General Motors’ success.

Here’s an example of a post-meeting recap:

If you use a project management tool or CRM with task management, you can also assign tasks in the platform so they go to the person’s dashboard, workspace or calendar immediately.

Of course, sending a follow-up requires diligent note-taking. For in-person meetings, assign someone to jot down decisions, minutes, conclusions and tasks. For virtual meetings, AI tools can take notes for you.

Platforms like Fireflies.ai identify decisions or action items and send them with transcripts and summaries to attendees after the meeting. This way, everyone remains informed without you having to draft follow-up notes.

Here are Fireflies’ meeting notes in Pipedrive:

You’ll know how productive the meeting was by the work it inspires.

4 types of tools to increase meeting productivity

Many software platforms can help you improve meeting productivity by automating administrative tasks, sharing information and facilitating cooperation in and out of meetings.

With that in mind, here are some tools to boost meeting productivity:

Evaluate any tool that helps you schedule meetings faster, run them efficiently and execute decisions or action items. To prioritize your search, find the tool that solves your team meetings’ biggest problem or time-sink.

Final thoughts

Now that you’ve learned strategies to eliminate unproductive meetings and run them more effectively, it’s time to put this knowledge into practice.

Start by removing unnecessary meetings. Next, run a meeting where you define the objectives, set an agenda, use strict time management, invite essential attendees, model leadership best practices and follow up with decisions or next steps. A better company culture will follow.