Surveys vs Morning Meetings

Anyone that has worked in the corporate world and isn't in middle management, will tell you that most meetings are a complete waste of time. Often employees spend hours discussing a few topics that could have easily been covered in an email or memo, and while meetings are meant to stimulate discussion, one of the following is usually true: The person in charge already made up their mind about what's happening. The people with great ideas won't talk or challenge another idea.

The employees are indifferent and don't bother critically thinking. Meetings are often an unfortunate waste of time that could have been used for something more productive. That's why you may want to consider simply sending out a survey instead.

Meetings are usually used to discuss items of note, explain roles in a project, ask questions or brainstorm. All of these can be completed with a survey. Remember that surveys don't need to be used just for market research – often they can simply be used as a way to quickly generate feedback or find out information, much like polling or interviewing.

So you can craft a survey that achieves these goals. Rather than discuss each item of note in person, you can type out everything that is on your mind and use survey questions, (especially qualitative questions) to generate feedback. When you need to know how a group feels you can add questions that poll the people that would have been at the meetings.

And, if someone needs elaboration to talk about something further, you can always have an option that invites them to a one on one meeting at their leisure, if they feel it's something they need to do. At the end, you can always take all of the feedback and either send out a new survey or send out a summary for everyone that would have been at the meeting to view. These surveys will take considerably less time than a traditional meeting, because they allow people to discuss things individually rather than deal with some of the time wasting that comes from a group.

There are even some additional benefits to this method as well, with very few weaknesses. We'll discuss some of these benefits in the next article, and follow that up with the few reasons you may not agree to complete a survey instead of a meeting.