If meetings are too often a time-wasting, box-ticking exercise, what is the alternative to connect managers and teams?
In a new book, There’s Got to Be a Better Way, Nelson R. Repenning and Donald Kieffer, from MIT Sloan School of Management, argue that while sophisticated technology can reduce effort and improve accuracy, it can also obscure the human connections needed for operational success.
“When this happens, the people who do the work are no longer in control, can’t see how their task fits with others’, and have no idea what to do when something goes wrong,” they write.
In the excerpt below they discuss the changes managers can make to help their teams interact in the right way to focus on the right things.
The problem with meetings
Connecting the work chain is half the story. Taking full advantage of the collective brainpower and experience of the organization to make sure work flows also requires “wiring” together the management chain: the sequence of people who support and guide the work.
Despite continued advances in software systems for managing workflow and the increasing use of remote, asynchronous modes of working, face-to-face communication remains critical to the rapid adaptation and problem-solving required to be successful in a dynamic world. Unfortunately, face-to-face communication, meaning meetings, is rarely used effectively.
Most managers think they connect to the flow of work through meetings. Weekly staff meetings, monthly one-on-ones, quarterly reviews, and annual off-site gatherings should give managers the opportunity to review the status of the work, deliver new policies or targets, and identify and solve problems.
But, despite the ubiquity of such meetings, most people sense that they are not used effectively. When we ask executives to identify the most frustrating things about their organizations, too many meetings and too many bad meetings always top the list.
While there’s a small industry of people writing books and articles about best practices for running better meetings, it remains an uphill battle with little evidence of progress.
Meetings can be one of the most powerful elements of an effective work design. As we saw with the work chain, when designed properly, face-to-face communication allows a real-time flow of information that supports rapid decision-making and problem-solving.
But meetings are also one of the most expensive uses of time, so they need to be used wisely. A poorly designed and executed hour-long meeting with ten people amounts to ten hours that are not being dedicated to other kinds of work.
Sadly, we see many more bad meetings than good ones. They are usually focused on reviewing metrics and externalizing blame for any shortfalls against the targets. They rarely delve into the state of the work or its design.
Bad news is usually not welcomed and is often delayed until reporting it can’t be avoided. Once an issue is revealed, the meeting often devolves to finding fault with the people nearest to the problem. Who wants to raise a problem in a punitive environment?
Differences in meeting effectiveness are often attributed to individual style—some managers are extroverts, some are reserved, etc.—but this represents a deep confusion about the nature of effective management and leadership.
We tend to deify those few who succeed in poorly designed work rather than highlight good work designs that accommodate a wide range of personalities and styles.
Just as a well-designed car can support most individual driving styles, a well-designed management chain can accommodate a range of approaches. Finding the unique personality that can be successful in a poorly designed system is a fool’s errand. Designing a system in which most leaders can be successful offers far more leverage.
When to get involved
The essence of designing an effective management chain starts with a simple question: What do managers do to move work forward? The simple answer is that they make decisions and solve problems. When the work is moving, managers don’t need to intervene. When the work stops, either something has gone wrong or a decision needs to be made about what to do next.
Either way, managers need to get involved. In contrast, managers don’t typically need to be involved in handoffs since, by definition, the work is standard.
Managerial work happens in huddles, whether they be regular staff meetings, project reviews, or impromptu problem-solving efforts. Management huddles not only keep leaders in touch with what is really happening but are the best vehicle for rapid decision-making, coaching, and problem-solving.
They are a critical design element in the management chain. Much as with the work chain, the trick is to get people collaborating in discovery mode at the right moments to leverage the power of face-to-face communication.
Distinguishing between two types of huddles—planned meetings initiated by a schedule and immediate meetings initiated by a specific condition (which we call a trigger)—will help get managers and leaders actively engaged in the flow of work at the right places and at the right times.
How do you know if you are meeting too frequently or not frequently enough? If you find yourself flooded with problems that you learned about through email and instant messaging, then you likely are not meeting frequently enough to keep up with the speed at which the work is generating new information.
Conversely, if regular meetings devolve to tedious status reports that don’t contain a lot of new information and there isn’t a lot of back-and-forth, then you are meeting too often.
Ditch the messages and meet face-to-face
Poorly designed work and management chains typically reveal themselves via endless chains of emails and instant messages focused on problem resolution.
Trying to resolve uncertainty and different opinions asynchronously is slow and error prone, and creates needless, ineffective iteration. When each question or clarification requires another note, try getting on a call or walking over to have a chat to resolve the issue.
Excerpted from There’s Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work by Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer, copyright ©2025 by Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer. Used with permission of Basic Venture, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Nelson P. Repenning is the Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center, and the School of Management Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Donald Kieffer is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at MIT Sloan.
