Americans sit through some 11 million meetings every day, with the unproductive ones costing companies an estimated $37 billion a year.
We know that meetings tend to fall apart thanks to sloppy agendas and unclear ground rules, but what makes them successful?
We researched how some of the most effective executives in history — from the late Apple founder Steve Jobs to Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — run the meetings that invariably fill their calendars.
Here's what we found.
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Legendary GM CEO Alfred Sloan said little — and then made follow-ups.
Sloan ran GM from the 1920s to the 1950s. During that time, he led GM to become the world's largest corporation. In the '50s, GM held 46% of the US auto market and employed over 600,000 Americans.
Sloan is also credited with inventing modern corporate structure.
According to leadership guru Peter Drucker, the follow-up memo was one of Sloan's go-to tools.
After any formal meeting — in which he simply announced the purpose, listened to what people had to say, and then left — Sloan would send a follow-up memo with a plan of action.
Drucker's take:
[Sloan] immediately wrote a short memo addressed to one attendee of the meeting. In that note, he summarized the discussion and its conclusions and spelled out any work assignment decided upon in the meeting (including a decision to hold another meeting on the subject or to study an issue). He specified the deadline and the executive who was to be accountable for the assignment. He sent a copy of the memo to everyone who'd been present at the meeting.
These memos made Sloan an "outstandingly effective executive," Drucker argues, and you might say they were a key to GM's dominance of the 20th century.
Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder and former Opsware CEO, likes to have one-to-one meetings.
Back when he was a CEO, Horowitz led Opsware to a $1.6 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2007.
Two years later, he cofounded Andreessen Horowitz, probably the most sought-after firm in venture capital.
Horowitz, who spends much of his time mentoring young leaders, says the most important job for a CEO is to create a way for people to communicate in a company.
The one-to-one meeting is essential to that process, he says, as it's the best place for ideas and critiques to flow up from employees to management.
Here's his take on how to run one:
If you like structured agendas, then the employee should set the agenda. A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance.
This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing. It also makes clear that it is her meeting and will take as much or as little time as she needs.
During the meeting, since it's the employee's meeting, the manager should do 10% of the talking and 90% of the listening. Note that this is the opposite of most one-on-ones.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk demands that people be super prepared.
Musk has incredibly high standards, so if you're meeting with him at Tesla or SpaceX, you have to be ready.
As one anonymous Musk employee shares on Quora:
When we met with Elon, we were prepared. Because if you weren't, he'd let you know it. If he asked a reasonable follow-up question and you weren't prepared with an answer, well, good luck.
What else would you expect from the most badass CEO in America?
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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