Meetings are important for collaboration but are often seen as mundane and unproductive. A survey found that employees spend significant time in meetings but find most uninspiring, would rather be elsewhere, and have trouble focusing. The top complaints about meetings are that they are too long, presenters are uninteresting, and content is uninspiring. For meetings to be more effective and engage participants, they must be better planned and led, with shorter duration and more dynamic presentations aided by new collaborative technologies.

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How to make mundane meetings a thing of the past
By Jason Cort May 01, 2014 Management
Let's make meetings matter
Meetings are the lifeblood of every organisation. They are the
nexus point where participants can come together, each with their
own contribution to make, and deliver something special as a team.
Where individual contributions become greater than the sum of their
parts, and solo voices become a choir. If meetings really are the
lifeblood, why is that blood stream so clogged up?
Let's face it: everyone in every walk of life has at some point looked
at their calendars and shuddered at the prospect of a meeting that
has to be sat through.
Meetings should be engaging, involving, your chance to play your
part in furthering the success of your organisation but in reality,
people fear that meetings will be tedious. People are convinced that
they are going to take too long.
Participants in meetings feel that being there with their colleagues
is actually keeping them away from doing something more
productive and most of all, people really, really hope they're not
going to be asked to be present!
Mundane meetings

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In an age of collaborative working, that is a mindset that is an issue
for any organisation. The end result is a lack of enthusiasm, lack of
motivation and lack of productivity. In a connected world, a
connected economy and a connected workforce, it is vital that
meetings become the collaborative resource that they need to be.
In January, Sharp carried out research on workplace meetings with
2,163 office workers, split between UK, Spain, Sweden, Germany,
France and Netherlands. The results make for depressing reading
and confirm the importance of facing up to the problem.
Some 86% of respondents say they spend up to five hours a week
in meetings, but 11% reckon that number can be as high as ten
hours.
Given that this is a sizeable chunk of time out of a working week ­
more than half a day ­ it is clearly important that such meetings
deliver value and add to the productivity of the organisation.
The bad news is: for most people, they
just don't!
Only 16% of people would describe the meetings they have at work
as "inspiring" while 79% of workers would rather be somewhere
else where they believe they would be more productive.
In fact, 10% of people have found some meetings so tedious that
they have invented a reason to get up and leave the room.
Among those who have stuck it out, there's no reason to believe
that they're actually paying attention and focusing their minds on
the matter at hand.
A third of us spend between 25­50% of the time that they are
supposed to be watching a presentation thinking about something
else while 12% actually spend almost all ­ 75­100% ­ of the
presentation with their mind elsewhere.
But at least they're paying attention some of the time ­ unlike the
9% of respondents who will admit to having fallen asleep during a
work presentation.
Given human nature, it's tempting to wonder just how many more
really have but are not prepared to admit it. At least a third of
respondents reckon they have spotted someone else nodding off!

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What's the problem?
There are a number of things that cause people to switch off when
they're watching a presentation.
These are the top three complaints.
1. They are too long ­ cited by 55% of respondents.
2. The presenters just aren't interesting enough ­ cited by 48% of respondents.
3. The content just isn't inspiring enough ­ cited by 43%.
So how can an organisation resolve this current disillusionment with
the meetings process?
Some points should be relatively simple to address, but do require
presenters to admit to shortcomings in their own approach and
delivery.
For example, if the top complaint is that meetings are too long, then
they must be shortened. But that demands better agenda
management on the part of the meeting organiser and a refusal to
let presenters outstay their welcome.
If a presenter or the content is not felt to be inspiring, that's a more
difficult one. Coaching and presentational training could be obtained
of course. (It's interesting to note that nearly three quarters of
respondents have been given no training on how to run a meeting
successfully. Lack of investment in this respect appears to be
paying its own sorry dividends.)
New tools needed
Training issues aside, it's clear that having better tools to support
content delivery would make a positive contribution to addressing
many issues surrounding the inability to hold the audience's
attention.
If a meeting is conducted with a presenter, a slide deck and a flip
chart at the front of the room, it's starting from a low base to begin
with. Nor does the use of a simple laptop plugged into a projector
meet the demands of respondents. It requires setting up, it's difficult
to use and inevitably there's always a cable missing that delays
proceedings and increases the boredom levels.
In an age of social media, multimedia and tablet computing, any
audience expects more when it comes to receiving and retaining

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information.
Successful, imaginative, engaging meetings demand successful,
imaginative, engaging approaches to content delivery. Only then will
meetings no more be mundane.
Sharp's BIG PAD technology is an example of technology helping
organisations to overcome 'mundane meeting' syndrome, allowing
groups to collaborate on ideas in meetings and speeding up tasks
which require input from multiple people, by using one interactive
whiteboard.