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Early this year, Shopify made headlines for — gasp — canceling all meetings. To many, it seemed like a harbinger of doom. (“Business can’t be good if they’re slashing meetings .…”) Instead, it led to a major boost in productivity.
Granted, the e-commerce company didn’t cancel all meetings. But it did cancel all recurring meetings of three or more people, prohibit meetings on Wednesdays, and ask managers to keep only essential meetings, among other restrictions.
Shopify reported the results: It will save an estimated 322,000 hours a year, and consequently it expects to deliver about 25% more projects.
That spike in productivity is not unique to Shopify.
As I wrote in my book “Indistractable,” superfluous meetings are a major source of distraction — and a sign of a dysfunctional workplace. They drain employee morale and are bad for business. One study found that organizations could save $25,000 per employee per year by stopping attendance to unnecessary meetings. (Try this Harvard Business Review calculator to see how much your meetings cost.)
Any company can improve workplace productivity by being more selective about which meetings make it onto the agenda. And they don’t need to follow Shopify’s policy to a T. Organizations can find their own simple process for filtering out unnecessary meetings, leaving only those that provide value for employees, teams and the business at large.
Here’s how you can approach filtering meetings in a way that works for your organization.
Cut Meetings That Aren’t Meetings
Organizations have to reframe their idea of what a meeting is. The primary goal of a work meeting should be gaining consensus on a decision. If a meeting doesn’t meet the requirement of gaining consensus among the group, it should not be a meeting.
Social engagements, for example, are not meetings. Neither are company announcements, which can easily be sent over email. There’s nothing worse than being in a meeting and thinking, “This meeting could have been an email”!
Related Article: Can Cracking Down on Meetings Improve Productivity?
Limit Brainstorming Sessions to Pairs
Brainstorming sessions are one of the biggest culprits for dumb meetings.
If brainstorming sessions are conducted in person, they should be limited to two people for two reasons. First, in a big brainstorming group, the loudest, highest-income and most dominant person tends to eclipse others in the conversation. Second, big brainstorming groups are significantly less productive than individuals who brainstorm alone.
But really, brainstorming sessions don’t need to happen in person. An even better approach is to email people the problem and ask them to provide suggestions by a deadline.
Put Messages Before Meetings
To understand what necessitates a meeting or not, categorize information dissemination as synchronous or asynchronous communication.
Synchronous communication, or the exchange of information in real-time, like meetings, should be reserved exclusively for making a decision. Meetings are the end of the decision-making process, not the beginning. During meetings, the team reviews all relevant facts and commits to a course of action. Before the meeting, all discussions about the issue should happen asynchronously.
Asynchronous communication includes a lag between when someone sends a message and when the receiver reads and reacts to it — e.g., emails and Slack messages. Information dissemination should happen through asynchronous communication, where people can absorb and digest the details when they can.
Synchronous communication, or meetings, should be rare. The default form of communication should be asynchronous — which is exactly the case at Shopify.
Related Article: How to Design Meetings That Work for Extroverts and Introverts
Require Meeting Prep
Setting up meetings today is too easy, which is why most organizations have too many of them. Avoid needless meetings by requiring whoever calls the meeting to do a little prep work first. The idea is to make it difficult to call a meeting! Only people with a valid reason for holding one will jump through hoops to schedule it.
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Meeting organizers should complete these three steps before they can schedule a meeting:
- Seek answers through asynchronous channels.
- Circulate a meeting agenda that lays out how attendees will address the problem.
- Write a one- to two-page briefing document that discusses the problem, their reasoning, and their best recommendations.
These three steps not only filter out nonessential meetings but also shorten meetings by getting to the point faster.
TL;DR
- The sole purpose of a meeting is to gain consensus. Social engagements, event updates, and brainstorming sessions are not meetings.
- Defer to asynchronous communication for information dissemination! In-person meetings, or synchronous communication, should be rare.
- Whoever calls a meeting should be required to first try asynchronous channels, create a meeting agenda, and write a briefing document.
This guide should help you to kick-start a discussion about hacking back meetings at your organization. Just don’t schedule a meeting to talk about it.