Meeting analysis: Findings from research and practice

"Almost every time there is a genuinely important decision to be made in an organization, a group is assigned to make it-or at least to counsel and advise the individual who must make it." Hackman [23]. Meeting analysis, that is the study of meeting expenses, productivity, processes, and outcomes, is relevant to GSS practice And research for several reasons. Many reviews and surveys [1, 2, 3, 15, 21, 52, 53, 57, 75, 82] reveal that meetings dominate workers' and managers' time and yet are considered to be costly, unproductive and dissatisfying. Studies [13, 52, 53, 56, 57] show that meetings are essential and that the number of meetings and their duration has been steadily increasing. Studies of Managers and knowledge workers [1, 13, 21, 51, 52, 53, 68, 75, 79, 89, 90, 92] reveal that they spend between 25%-80% of their time in meetings, suggesting that meetings are an important part of one's working life. Estimates of meeting expenses [1, 13, 39, 53] range from costs of $30 million to over 100 million per year to losses between $54 million and 3.7 billion annually! Self estimates of meeting productivity [15, 21, 53, 75] by managers in many different functional areas range from 33%-47%.