Why Do Meetings Need to Change?
Now, have you ever considered which tasks take up most of your working hours? Of course, the nature of the work differs by industry.
However, I think those working at ordinary companies would answer broadly as follows.
(1) Document preparation (proposals, administrative documents, etc.)
(2) Meetings
(3) Sales / business negotiations
(4) Travel
(5) Other (breaks, training, etc.)
Unfortunately, I could not find any data surveying how working time is allocated among tasks, but looking at the situation at my business partners, I believe that, combined with the changes in work environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the time spent on business negotiations or “meetings” has increased considerably.
Personally, too, even three meetings a day used to tire me out, but because remote work has eliminated travel time, I now have four a day, and as many as seven on busy days.
Yes, for all of you businesspeople, “meetings” are indispensable, and it is these “meetings” that consume much of your daily working hours. Certainly, with the spread of remote work, it has become a good era for increasing the number of “meetings.”
However, more “meetings” do not necessarily mean more work gets done; on the contrary, they risk increasing the company's losses. Therefore, we have entered an era in which the “increase in meetings” due to remote work has a large impact on company performance, either positive or negative.
Now, I would like to get right into how to raise the quality of “meetings,” but first you need to understand the following premises.
Without knowing these premises, even if I explain specific methods, they will mostly not sink in.
I think you will understand why once you hear these premises.
Prerequisite Knowledge for Holding “Meetings”
Know the Cost of “Meetings”
One of the premises is to “know the cost of meetings.”
“What? Most of our meetings are held in-house, so there are no costs like meeting room fees.”
I can almost hear people saying that.
Certainly, whether held at the office or from home, remote meetings and the like seem not to cost anything. In reality, however, 10,000-yen bills are sprouting wings and flying away during meetings. You just can't see it...
The answer, in short, is personnel costs.
Now, here is a question.
Assuming that the average take-home pay of “meeting” participants is 300,000 yen, try calculating how much the personnel cost (meeting cost) would be if six people attended a two-hour meeting. *There are other assumptions as well, but I will omit them for now.
The answer is 67,500 yen.
Now, let me explain how this was calculated.
First, for an employee with a take-home pay of 300,000 yen, the company sets aside about 900,000 yen in costs.
(You surely know this much) Each month the company deposits 300,000 yen into the employee's bank account, but it also pays the company's share of insurance, taxes, and so on. In addition, the company bears the cost of retirement benefit reserves and employee welfare.
Furthermore, costs not shown on the pay slip, such as office rent, recruiting costs, training costs, development costs, advertising costs, and administrative costs for general affairs and HR, increase roughly in proportion to the size of the company (number of employees).
If you can see the company's P&L (profit and loss statement), try the following calculation.
SG&A expenses (total costs including personnel, office rent, and administrative costs such as general affairs and HR) ÷ personnel costs × 100% = ratio of SG&A to personnel costs
If you calculate this, I think it will come to roughly 250-300%.
So, for a take-home pay of 300,000 yen, taking it as 300%, the company should be setting aside three times that, 900,000 yen, as the funds required per person.
(In reality, the calculation is more complicated...)
Then, assuming 20 working days per month per person and 8 working hours per day, the daily wage is 900,000 yen ÷ 20 days = 45,000 yen, and the hourly wage is 45,000 yen ÷ 8 hours = 5,625 yen.
Next, we factor in the number of meeting participants and the meeting time.
This gives 5,625 yen × 6 people × 2 hours = 67,500 yen.
Even though the company is paying about 70,000 yen for the “meeting,” if meaningless “meetings” are held and more employees think the meeting “doesn't cost anything,” it becomes hard for them to be motivated to improve the quality of “meetings,” and even lower-level meetings continue. It is not hard to imagine where this company will end up.
In this way, in response to the increase in “meetings” due to the spread of remote work, before improving the quality of “meetings,” both executives and employees must first understand that meetings themselves “cost money”; otherwise we cannot move on to the next explanation. Do you see why?
Businesspeople Who Don't Know the Meaning of “Uchiawase” (Meeting)
Let me talk about the next premise.
First, here are examples of poor behavior (before meetings) that I have seen among businesspeople.
(1) Attending without knowing what it is about, perhaps because another member put it on their calendar.
(2) Attending without any preparation even though they know the meeting's theme.
The word “uchiawase” (meeting) originates from the performance of “gagaku.” “Gagaku” refers to ancient Japanese music and dance handed down at the imperial court, temples, and shrines. Gagaku uses wind instruments such as the sho, string instruments such as the biwa, and percussion instruments such as drums. Keeping the beat by striking percussion instruments such as the shakubyoshi to align their rhythms was called “uchiawase.” From this, uchiawase came to mean “making things fit together well.”
The origin of the word holds a major hint about how to conduct an “uchiawase.” Wind, string, and percussion players each practice individually and then create a single piece of music at the “uchiawase.” However, there is a condition: “Unless each person practices individually, the uchiawase cannot take place.”
Therefore, as in the examples of poor businesspeople introduced earlier, if no preparation is made for the “meeting,” that meeting becomes meaningless.
In conclusion, I define an “uchiawase” as a place to align each person's research, planning, and other work done up to that point, and as the series of tasks of sharing one's own opinions and positions and incorporating them into everyone's work.
The graduate school (MBA) I attended also assigned many assignments. In class, much of the time was spent presenting those assignments. If you had not completed your assignment, there was no point in attending class. Unlike compulsory education, graduate school is paid for out of one's own pocket.
So everyone should know how much a single class costs.
That is exactly why I did not want to waste any class, and I had no choice but to work desperately on my assignments.
What do you think? Is there a future for a company with employees who don't know that meetings cost money, don't know what an “uchiawase” really means, and don't prepare?
The title of this piece, “If You Don't Change Your Meetings, Your Company Is Finished,” was given for the reasons above.
Now, with these premises in mind, how should meetings be changed... I will discuss that in the next column.
Text: Hiroshi Ashida
●Column articles are scheduled for publication on the 1st of each month.
Column scheduled for February: “If You Don't Change Your Meetings, Your Company Is Finished. Part 2”