A 2018 study on meeting lateness shows that meeting lateness is negatively related to both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness.
Interestingly, when people arrive late, our expectations for the meeting drop, as well as the actual effectiveness. This study was specifically looking at 5 and 10 minute lateness, and only in the context of American participants. Other cultures or times may vary.
So if we want the best results from our meetings, we need to start them on time. If the meeting says 10:00, then start at 10:00.
The most common objection I get to this is that it leaves no downtime between meetings. If I need a quick bio-break or need to physically move between rooms, I have no time to do that.
So why aren’t we scheduling our meetings to start at 10:05? There is nothing that says we have to start on the hour. Or establish an agreement that all meetings end with at least five minutes before the next slot. Then our previous meeting would have ended at 9:55, and this wouldn’t be a problem. I know several companies that have configured their calendaring software to do this by default.
If we wish breaks between meetings, and I do recommend that, then explicitly schedule them. When we pack everything back to back then we’re actively planning to be late, and as we can see above, that’s not good.
The other common objection I hear is “we don’t want to get right into business, we want some social context first”. There are two responses to that. The first is to open the meeting a bit earlier to allow people who want that social time to do that. The second is to make the social part an official part of the meeting and start that at the allotted time.
Either way, it’s clear that if we want effective meetings we need to start by making a schedule and keeping to it.