Chiefs take steps to tame the voracious `meeting beast’

When old-style secretaries used the “he’s in a meeting” or “stuck at the airport” line to protect their high-level bosses, it was usually a convenient way of fobbing off a minion, a disgruntled client or a spouse suspicious about arduous working hours.

These days, the chief executive go-betweens — now called executive personal assistants but just as fearsome gatekeepers — are likely to be telling the truth. Despite teleconferencing and an armoury of mobile e-devices, endless meetings and travel are still the banes of chief executives’ lives.
Given the rising price of chief executives — on average they’re worth about $1000 an hour these days — gabfests on customer charters or office paint schemes are costly as well as irritating.

According to a joint study by the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School, one-third of a typical chief executive’s 55-hour working week is spent in meetings (18 hours), with a further four hours on phone calls and five hours at business meals.
Travel time also features strongly in the survey of 500 chief executives, based on logs kept by personal assistants on behalf of their time-poor bosses.
This breakdown sounds about right, according to The Australian’s own straw poll of the heads of ASX-listed companies. But there’s a key proviso: Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder says a 55-hour week sounds “like a dream” for the modern chief executive, while Treasury Wine Estates chief David Dearie — who works 70-80 hour weeks — says 55 hours “would be a joy”.

The good news is our corporate chiefs have worked out ways to keep meetings — the ultimate time wasters — short.
Armed with an array of e-gadgetry, they have also conquered downtime in the airport lounge and at the taxi rank.
Perth-based Goyder, who also has an office in Melbourne, says he usually has lunch at his desk and struggles to clear his diary for what was once a customary afternoon jog.
Goyder’s on meeting double rations as he chairs all of the conglomerate’s divisional boards. But meetings at the “commercially focused” Wesfarmers are admirable for their brevity.

“I think when people have a meeting with me they’re always conscious to keep things reasonably succinct,” Goyder says.
“It’s not a major issue.”
Having been intimately involved in AMP’s marathon battle to snare Axa Asia Pacific, AMP chief executive Craig Dunn is no stranger to meetings with investment bankers and advisers.

“There are meetings and there are meetings,” he says. “It’s fair to say we spend a lot of time in meetings, probably too much time.”
Dunn says AMP tries to make meetings about productive brainstorming. He adds there have been occasions when people wanted to “share accountability” — in other words, blame someone else for the latest cock-up.

John Douglas, chief executive of the contract engineer Coffey International, recalls that when he was a quarry operator for Boral, he took his son to the site to meet the workers at the pit face, all with readily defined titles.

“My son then turned around and asked what I did and I could only reply, I go to meetings.”
At the globally operating Coffey not much has changed. “At a senior level, because you manage people, you are always at meetings,” Douglas says. “The key is how efficiently you run these meetings and . . . to understand the purpose of the meeting.”

As head of the 83-store Radio Rentals chain, John Hughes has more scope to do what he really likes: talking to managers on the shopfloor. And when there’s a problem: “I pick up the phone and ring someone, kill the snake and move on.”

Still, Hughes finds a typical weekly schedule peppered with eight meetings, but he has also become adept at keeping them to less than an hour. When it comes to efficient time use, Hughes owes a debt to Roger Corbett, who recommended a book called The Vital Few back in 1973. The tome espoused the Pareto Principle — the rule that 20 per cent of one’s time is spent on productive activity — well before the advent of the 1980s self-help babble.

At the time Corbett, who rose to be Woolworths chief executive, was general manager of Grace Brothers, while Hughes was head of menswear. “Roger taught me what you have to focus on as a manager because you can get caught up with a lot of inconsequential crap,” Hughes says.

Stephen Langsford, executive chairman of DVD rental and streaming house Quickflix, has a gruelling load of 20 meetings and a further 10 hours of phone calls. Not surprisingly for a Perth-based outfit, travel (five hours) also ropes in an indecent chunk of the diary.

“When I am not on email I now spend a lot of time on the phone or in meetings with investors, brokers, analysts and media, or in roadshows and external presentations,” Langsford says. “I travel a lot and with iPad and iPhone I am pretty much always in contact with the business, or thinking about it.”
When he’s roadshowing the company, it’s possible to squeeze in eight meetings compressed to 45 minutes each, he says.

“Having an agenda, knowing the points you want to learn or get across and getting quickly down to business, all keep the meeting business-like,” he says.
“Business meetings over lunch or a sandwich lunch are good — but don’t expect to eat much if you’re doing all the talking.”
Michael Russell, chief executive of listed home-loan broker Mortgage Choice, provides a snapshot of his working day, which on Mondays starts with his weekly commute from his Melbourne home to his Sydney office.

The day includes no fewer than three hours of internal meetings, but the routine is broken up by activities such as buying a fundraising chocolate from a staff member, discussing AFL football or solving his daughter’s trigonometry question. As overseer of franchisees, Russell makes a point of being accessible.
“My mobile phone rarely gets through the day without a late afternoon recharge,” he says. “I have no problem with giving out my mobile to all and sundry and, contrary to trend, I still display my mobile on my business card.”

Regrettably for Salmat chief executive Grant Harrod, meetings are still the norm at the marketing communications house, taking 90 per cent of his time.
Harrod says most are productive because they have clear agendas, “but sometimes you walk away thinking that’s an hour of my life I won’t get back”.
Harrod’s approach to keeping meetings on track is simple but effective: “My assistant knocks on the door when there’s five minutes to go,” he says. “It’s easy to get immersed in conversation and it’s rude to stare at your watch.”

Treasury Wine Estates’ Dearie estimates meetings take 60 per cent of his office time, as the company works through an overhaul following its demerger from brewing major Foster’s in May.

His trick is to schedule meetings in 15 to 45 minute sessions so participants know to get their message across quickly and pre-plan. “We tell people to come with solutions, not problems,” he says. “We make sure everyone knows what the purpose of the meeting is ahead of time.”
Travel, meanwhile, is “tragically” a reality for Coffey’s Douglas, as the company operates in Africa and Brazil. Because of the distractions of an aircraft cabin, Douglas focuses more on shut-eye than paperwork.

“I have always always worked on the basis that an hour on the plane is worth around 30 on the desk,” he says. “But an hour’s sleep is an hour’s sleep.”
Santos chief executive David Knox says he spends two to three days a week at the oil and gas producer’s Adelaide base and two days interstate. “Every second weekend I’m doing something related to work and most evenings are related to work,” he says. “The key thing I try to minimise is travel . . . we use videoconferencing as much as we can.”

Mortgage Choice’s Russell has become so well-acquainted with his iPad that he has assigned it a name, Ida. “No booting up or down, she is always on call and immediately able to help me respond to emails or access my Google documents,” Russell says.
Still, despite the travel and talkfests, our harried chiefs are a contented lot, and not just because of hourly rates that would make an upmarket escort jealous.
Goyder says: “I enjoy getting different perspectives.” Russell is most inspired by the organisation’s “young people with fresh ideas and an open mind”.
Treasury Wine Estate’s Dearie works 70 to 80 hours a week but there’s no need to tune the violins. “One of the great things about working in the wine industry is that you spend a lot of time out meeting very interesting people, eating great food and sampling spectacular wine.”
As far as executive perks go, that more than compensates for marathon meetings and monotonous inflight safety demos.

“When people have a meeting with me they’re always conscious to keep things succinct.”
WESFARMERS CEO, RICHARD GOYDER

“It’s fair to say we spend a lot of time at meetings, probably too much time.”
AMP CEO CRAIG DUNN

You spend a lot of time … eating great food and sampling spectacular wine.”
TREASURY WINE’S DAVID DEARIE

Breakdown of CEOs’ time in a 55-hour work week, on average
18 hours Meetings
20 Miscellaneous*
2 Phone calls
2 Conference calls
2 Public events
5 Business meals
6 Working alone
55 hours

* Travel, exercise, personal
appointments and other activities
Source: Executive Time Use Project