Great work! You have leadership convinced of the importance of standards. You have shown them all the great benefits that standards have to offer. This is a big step. So now what do you do to keep the momentum going? The next important step is to build a team of experts on the various aspects of your business that these new standards will be implemented.
This should be a relatively diverse team as far as expertise is concerned. Depending on the size of your company, you will want to avoid having any senior leadership on this team. Try to choose people closest to the business processes or products that will be the most impacted by the standards being put in place. It goes without saying that if this happens to be your senior leadership due to company size or their involvement in that specific part of the business, you should include them.
The reason for keeping senior leadership off the team when possible isn’t about excluding their input—it’s about efficiency and protecting everyone’s time. When you have senior leaders in every standards meeting, a few things tend to happen: other team members may defer to their opinions rather than speaking freely, scheduling becomes exponentially harder, and the actual experts closest to the work may hold back their best ideas. You want the people who live in these processes daily to drive the conversation, with leadership providing oversight and approval at key milestones rather than attending every working session.
The Meeting Problem We Can’t Ignore
Here’s where most standards initiatives fall apart: death by meeting. Before you start scheduling your new standards team for weekly sessions, consider this sobering reality. In the United States alone, businesses waste approximately $37 billion annually on unproductive meetings. For a company with just 100 employees, unnecessary meetings can drain $2.5 million per year. Scale that up to 5,000 employees, and you’re looking at $100 million wasted annually on gatherings that accomplish nothing.
After just 30 minutes, 52% of attendees lose interest. By the 50-minute mark, 96% have mentally checked out. Nearly 90% of participants admit to daydreaming, while 73% do other work during meetings, and over 92% multitask. These aren’t engaged team members collaborating on important standards—they’re hostages watching the clock, resentful of the time being stolen from their actual work.
The culprit? Poor planning and execution. When you’re building a standards team, you’re asking busy experts to carve time out of their already packed schedules. If those meetings feel like a waste, you’ll lose their engagement fast—and with it, any chance of creating standards that actually work.
Running Meetings That Actually Matter
So how do you avoid becoming another statistic in the meeting wasteland? The key is ruthless intentionality. Every meeting must have a clear purpose, a defined agenda, and only the people who truly need to be there. Here’s how to structure your standards team meetings for maximum efficiency and minimum waste:
- Always Use an Agenda—No Exceptions
- Since only 37% of meetings use an agenda, this alone will put you ahead of most organizations. Send the agenda at least 24 hours in advance so people can prepare. Include specific topics, time allocations, and what decisions need to be made. If someone asks to add something to the meeting and it doesn’t fit the agenda, schedule a separate session or handle it offline.
- Invite Only the Essential People
- One of the most annoying meeting scenarios—cited by 65% of attendees—is discussing topics that don’t apply to everyone in the room. If only three people need to discuss a specific standard for your manufacturing process, don’t invite the entire ten-person standards team. Respect people’s time by keeping meetings focused and attendance limited to those directly involved.
- Set Clear Time Limits and Stick to Them
- Remember, 52% of people lose interest after 30 minutes. Keep your standards meetings to 45 minutes or less whenever possible. If a topic requires more time, break it into multiple focused sessions. Start on time, end on time—nothing erodes meeting credibility faster than the person who called it showing up late or letting discussions run over.
- Assign Clear Roles and Ownership
- Of course, letting the expert in each specific topic lead the discussion for their area is critical. When someone owns a topic, they come prepared, they drive the conversation, and they’re accountable for next steps. This prevents the common trap of everyone talking in circles because no one feels responsible for moving things forward.
- Document Decisions and Actions—Then Follow Through
- End every meeting with a clear summary: what was decided, who’s doing what, and when it’s due. Share this within 24 hours. Employees are tired of giving feedback and seeing no change, no movement, and no action—this “lack of action fatigue” kills engagement faster than anything. If your standards meetings become places where people talk endlessly but nothing happens, you’ve lost.
Building the Right Team Culture
Beyond logistics, the culture you create in these meetings matters enormously. You want an environment where people feel comfortable challenging ideas, proposing alternatives, and having real debates about what standards will work best. That only happens when:
- People feel their time is respected
- Meetings are productive and move things forward
- Everyone’s expertise is valued equally
- Decisions are made and acted upon
- The work is meaningful and visibly improves the business
With 71% of workers wasting time every week due to unnecessary or cancelled meetings, and 45% of employees admitting they make excuses or even lie to skip meetings, you’re fighting an uphill battle for people’s trust and attention. The only way to win it is to prove that your standards meetings are different—they’re focused, efficient, and actually accomplish something.
In the next article, I’ll dive into the actual process of creating standards: how to structure the work, how to gain consensus without endless debate, and how to document standards in a way that people will actually use them.
