Who's in the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them

CHAPTER 6

Best Practices

Design an Organization That Delivers the Outcomes You Need

Unless you are an astronaut or a brain surgeon or you pursue some other similarly self-explanatory profession, you have likely had a child ask you, “What do you do?” And if you said that you were a corporate executive, you were probably asked the question a second time, but with an added emphasis: “But what do you do?” In candid moments, many executives would confess, “Mostly, I go to meetings.”

Various studies over the years have found that the average executive spends anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of his or her working hours in meetings and that as much as a third of that time is unproductive. My experience is that these estimates are on the low side, especially ...