Let’s Have Another Meeting About Having Fewer Meetings.

The calendar invitation arrives at 4:42 p.m. on a Friday.

Subject: Meeting Optimization Working Session.

Eleven attendees. Ninety minutes. A required pre-read. Optional pastries, which everyone knows means no pastries.

The purpose of the meeting is to explore ways the company can spend less time in meetings.

Nobody laughs, because the person who organized it is a vice president.

Monday arrives. Two people are late because they were in another meeting. Somebody shares a screen. Somebody else asks for “the thirty-thousand-foot view,” and a third person promises to circulate the slides, which is especially encouraging because the slides are already on the screen.

By minute twenty-three, the conversation has become a debate over whether an update is a check-in, a stand-up, a sync, or a touch-base. They are apparently different animals. There may be a chart.

I have nothing against meetings. A good one can solve a problem that twenty emails couldn't touch. Put a difficult decision on the table, bring the people who can actually make it, talk through the messy bits, and get on with your day. That's a worthwhile gathering.

But the corporate calendar has developed a thriving side business in ceremonial attendance.

We invite people because they might be interested. We include managers so they're “in the loop.” We bring someone from finance because a number might be mentioned. Soon the room contains a small village whose primary contribution is nodding.

The absurdity isn't that people talk too much. It's that we've turned talking into proof that work is happening.

The fix won't arrive in a new meeting policy illustrated with eleven arrows. It begins with a mildly impolite question: What decision requires everyone in this room?

If nobody can name one, the meeting might be a memo. If no memo is needed, it might be nothing at all. Nothing is an underrated management technique.

Naturally, someone will propose a committee to study this.

Please decline the invitation.

#Leadership #Productivity