Most of my mentors and I would set a maximum length for a weekly military staff meeting to last no more than one hour. We would limit visual presentations to one quad chart per key member of a sub-organization (usually 5-7 of those in all). That hour would include giving everyone in the room a chance to speak about their little piece of the big puzzle. Any written material that was to be discussed was expected to be studied and digested in the hours or days before the meeting.
I always had a “henchman” to keep things moving along and on track, usually my executive officer. We thought, all in all, that we were efficient with this format.
Death by Powerpoint
As I transitioned to academia, I experienced the horrors of department meetings that lasted 2-3 hours often taking place on Friday afternoons and I emphatically felt even better about the way we did business with our weekly routine.
Stunningly, now it appears our military efficiencies have gone the way of analog technology and have been replaced by even more streamlined and diverse methods. One-hour meetings have become entirely too long and a few years ago, not coincidentally coinciding with the “Zoom Boom”, 30-minute staff meetings became the new standard.
Recently, an article in the Wall Street Journal said 30-minute ordeals were time wasters and 15 minutes was satisfactory to conduct business. Huh? At my age, it takes me ten minutes to sit down and get back up. I understand cutting out the pleasantries to some extent, but they are also a part of the important ways a leader builds rapport with their staff.
New School Powerpoint
What about PowerPoint? We thought we were being efficient by limiting participant presentations to one-slide quad charts, getting away from the 30-slide deck of waterfall charts, overlapping circles of different dimensions and text colors, and wiring diagrams as complicated as the DoD procurement system. Now, PowerPoint, if allowed in staff meetings, often comes with the restriction of no more than five words per slide with no charts or graphs allowed. The one-page memo actually passed out at the beginning of the staff meeting and quietly read in place of PowerPoint was an idea of trendsetter Jeff Bezos that seems to have caught on except…it was not his original idea.
Bezos must have channeled his inner Ronald Reagan, who directed his cabinet secretary, William P. Clark Jr., to make meetings and decision-making more efficient. Clark Jr. helped create the one-page memo, which led Reagan to once make as many as eight decisions in an hour based on the content. To go one step further, Clark Jr. found the inspiration for his streamlined approach from both Eisenhower and Churchill, who wanted information in one page or less. How we went full circle back to this approach navigating the 150-slide PowerPoint presentation along the way is something for an organizational management sociologist to study and then report back to us.
Presentations are not one size fits all
What works for some will not work for others. Streamlining meetings by limiting attendees, content, and unnecessary discussion or arguing takes practice and firmness. It can be universally agreed upon that no one likes long meetings, and they also affect morale and productivity, yet people seem to not want to give up their seat at the table nor their opportunity to present. In the words of Fleetwood Mac “Go Your Own Way”. Find the methods that work for you and do not settle on something just because it is trendy.
