Billions of dollars are wasted each year in ineffective meetings.
Your company is likely one of them.
Have you calculated the cost of a single meeting? Let’s be conservative and assume each team member costs your company $50/hour. A one-hour meeting of 10 people costs the company $500. And I bet you need authorization on purchases exceeding $500.
Ironic isn’t it.
This doesn’t include opportunity cost. Those individuals are pulled away from their work. And it does not include the cost of task switching.
Meetings are not bad!
But most meetings are not needed.
Table of Contents
Introducing asynchronous decision making
It’s simple in practice. But it does take 100% commitment from the entire team including senior leadership.
A threaded communication tool is crucial. A Google Document or Word document is not optimal. Instead check out Slack, P2 Theme, Threads.com, wiki like Confluence, etc.
Here’s how to run an asynchronous decision making meeting:
1. Share ALL the details
Post the details about the decision to be made. Include all supporting details needed to make a decision. At least known details there are always unknown unknowns which you may encounter during the decision making.
2. Establish an end frame
Include an end time. The end time is critical. Give your team enough time to prioritize the decision, digest the details, and give the decision some thought. 48 hours is typically a minimum but 24 hours can be productive if the decision is time sensitive. Urgent decisions might be better handled in an in-person meeting.
3. Allow open discourse
Allow the team to make their case and dispute others. You don’t want bullies but discourse is positive.
4. Stop the discussion
End the discussion at the end time. It’s important to keep the end time. The discussion must stop and a decision must be made.
5. Make a decision
The key stakeholder who organized the decision will review the arguments before making a decision. A timeframe for the decision should be communicated to the group in the same thread.
6. Close the loop
The stakeholder communicates the decision to the team.
The key benefits of asynchronous decision making is maintaining a record of decision making with arguments supporting or refuting decisions. This helps future decisions as you can conduct detailed post mortems.
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash.