Meetings for the Sake of Meetings

There is something weird going on in airlines where various departments are physically isolated and communication suffers. Everybody keeps track of each other with hundreds of meetings. Everybody tries very hard to tackle the action items agreed to in the meetings and nothing good is happening. There are so many meetings that people attending meetings don't have time to write the meeting reports. Sometimes the same subjects are discussed all over again. Those meetings trigger more meetings and after some time the shop space shrinks and more meeting rooms are created. After just a few days without the written action points everything is forgotten and a new meeting is required to refresh peoples' memories.

Why so many meetings? New managers are put in charge of departments. They are well educated but not experienced at dealing with all kinds of workshop issues. Sometimes they must contribute in meetings, which are a bit technical, and they need a specialist's knowledge. If they don't bring the appropriate specialist to the meeting, they won't be able to be useful. If the specialist is not available, the manager has to take an action item or even more than one action item and agree to provide feedback next week. After the manager returns to his office he has to organize another meeting with his supervisors or with the next layer of staff. They will get homework and provide feedback to enable the manager to go to his meeting.

Soon the manager's agenda is filled with meetings and two weeks later the agendas of his supervisors are fully planned as well. Those managers don't have time to do useful work (write reports, manage the department, interview potential new employees, answer e-mails, etc.) and they will be forced to seek help from the technicians. Technicians are at the end of the chain and cannot delegate the job to a lower level, but they have to run production and help supervisors and managers solve all kinds of serious but not production-related problems.

Additional danger is created when managers don't pay attention to the important workload (production). Little by little the number of employees increases. But the ratio between production people and office people changes because the amount of office people is climbing.

It is no wonder when technicians complain that their bosses have no idea what is happening on the floor. Good communication and just a little bit of technical knowledge at the management level can prevent this problem.

People might wonder if it would be possible to measure that. For example, if the amount of time spent in meetings is going to be more than 50 percent of the manager's time (and increasing), it is a bad sign. If he starts to delegate some of his jobs to lower level managers because he has so many meetings, he is a step further in the wrong direction. His technicians will never complain to him that they have to stop their production work and do administrative jobs. They are trained to follow orders given by the boss. If their manager tells them to stop troubleshooting and go make a list of parts with the longest lead time, they will stop production work and start digging in files and make those lists. The manager will of course say that is at that moment the most important job. Who dares argue? The same manager will later complain that productivity is low and organize a meeting about that. Again there will be more action items and new meetings.

Assigning knowledgeable people in key positions and having the discipline to stop all meetings can only help. If the department is a part of a big company, it will hire an external consultant for a high sum of money, and the consultants will advise everyone to stop the meetings and talk with people face-to-face. Managers should ensure that technicians can actually do the work they are paid for and not overload them with the work of others.

Some meetings are required. There is nothing wrong with meetings but they should be short and efficient. Big meeting reports are not important but action lists with names and dates are important. After the meeting, everybody must be sure what is required of them for the next meeting.

Managers should enable production to rock and roll. Avionics shops will never be efficient if technicians are pulled away from their test consoles and forced to produce capability lists or produce strap-down reports or run after material or make sure that repaired LRUs are shipped on time to the correct address. Good shop managers should let everyone do their jobs. With a reduced amount of meetings there will be plenty of time left to manage the departments properly. This way the departments will be healthy and the technicians will be happy. Happy people produce quality. No doubt about that!