Open for Less Meetings
The Ultimate Guide to Fewer Meetings
The Ultimate Guide to Fewer Meetings
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Quick Spin: Today you will learn...
Top 2 reasons meetings are hurting companies
10 step guide to increase meeting efficacy and decrease meeting frequency
After publishing my newsletter about how I work 3 hours a day…..I got a lot of messages saying “What about meetings?!” Rightfully so. I’ve been a junior employee at a huge firm and a CEO at a startup….. I understand the dynamics.
Meetings are the most abused tool at companies.
Why should companies care about fixing them?
→ Meetings are expensive: In a study of time budgeting at large corporations, Bain & Company found that a single weekly meeting of managers was costing one organization $15M a year. Yikes.
→ Meetings are disruptive: Every meeting has a blast radius. A meeting in the middle of the afternoon is likely to defer a task that needs hours of unbroken concentration.
Most companies are wasting time and money by not implementing a meeting strategy so I created a step by step guide for teams to follow to increase efficiency and efficacy.
Send this to a friend (or boss) who might benefit.
Can’t wait to hear what you think!
♟️ MY TURN: 10 Steps to Fewer Meetings
With my second startup I was a single mom of 3 toddlers in the middle of the pandemic so I knew I had to think about culture and operating rhythm differently.
I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from 17+ years of working at large organizations & building my own to create this comprehensive guide for any manager, leader or employee to increase meeting efficacy and decrease meeting frequency.
The only way to win at life is to win your calendar so let’s dive in.
PS: these can be applied to solopreneurs as well.
Step 1: Do we know what success looks like?
If meetings are the symptom, lack of direction and strategy are the root cause.
Without a clear north star of what success looks like, people end up creating work to look busy and valuable. Everyone should be able to repeat a north star statement that includes the why (are we here) and the what (does success look like).
Ex: We want to be the go-to source for X and hit $Y revenue in 2023.
Step 2: Do we know how we will achieve it?
Now that everyone knows what success looks like, it’s important to outline the 3-5 biggest company initiatives to get there.
New sales training program?
New products?
New campaign?
Sure, there are thousands of little to-dos to make the company run but what are the biggest levers that will lead to YoY growth?
Everyone should be able to repeat these initiatives if asked so throw those slides at the start of every internal deck.
This step creates instant prioritization.
Step 3: Stop the Seagulls
Meetings tend to happen when managers freak out about how something is performing and swoop in (like a seagull) which ends in complete chaos. Stop the seagull managers by creating line of sight into team/channel success.
Do you have clear OKRs per team?
Do we have a clear strategy to hit them?
Is someone reporting on them weekly?
Where I see most companies fail….OKR planning is a quarterly exercise not a living document.
Teams need to show how they are progressing to their goals. This can be updated asynchronously but on the same day and color coded red, yellow, green.
Pro tip: Use a calendar invite to hold space for everyone to get it done on the same day for seagulls, I mean managers, to review asynch.
Step 4: A reliable OS
Meetings happen when employees don’t know when the next strategy session will take place to address something that is not working.
Creating a reliable operating system will eliminate a lot of “this isn’t working” convos.
An example of 3 steady touchpoints:
Every Quarter → Leadership “offsite” to review success definition & strategy to get there (see #1 + #2). Leaders come back and report takeaways to their teams.
Every Month → Department retro + deep dive to review department OKRs (red, yellow, greens). Reassess strategy and resources to hit department & channel metrics.
Every Week → Department / Channel updates to OKR tracker (red, yellow, greens) so managers know what’s working and what’s not and can pinpoint trends faster.
Step 5: Spirit Week Meeting Schedule
Everyone knew when PJ day was and when to dress in school colors during spirit week. So apply the same to your weekly meeting strategy.
At my startup we kept the same weekly cadence to ensure we didn’t disrupt one another’s deep work or the fact that many of us are working moms and need to know what mornings are open to take kids to appointments or run errands.
Here was our meeting week cadence:
Monday - No meetings - Asynch email update (reply with “this week I’m focused on…”) - Asynch updating of last week’s OKRs/KPIs so I could see what was in the red
Tuesday - Synch’d slack meeting for 60 minutes to get what you need from everyone (we called this the “Hallway chats”) Meeting times open from 11-3
Wednesday - Heavy meeting day All 1:1s took place on this day
Thursday - Meeting times open from 11-3pm Big department meetings on this day
Friday - Urgent meetings only Morning meetings only. Meetings done by noon
Step 5b. Know the Blast Radius
Meetings should be anchored to the center of the day to allow for hours of uninterrupted work in the morning and afternoon. A 30 minute meeting at 4:30 will likely prevent any more work from being done.
OK NOW LET’S SWITCH GEARS TO FIX HOW WE EXECUTE MEETINGS
Step 6: DRI vs. Decision Maker
The Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) is responsible for gathering the information and moving the project or KPI forward. They may or may not be the decision maker. It’s important to designate both on every big project.
Not sure? Ask.
Many times no one knows who is responsible and who is making the decision. Get this information BEFORE a meeting so the right people are in the room.
Step 7: Make every meeting invite SOAR
Ask yourself these 4 questions when sending a meeting invite:
→ S: Can it be any Shorter than 30 / 60 mins?
→ O: Can anyone be Optional?
→ A: Is there an Agenda included?
→ R: Will someone be able to Record it?
Step 8: The One Slide Meeting
Meetings do not create buy-in. Great ideas create buy-in.
Use the One Slide Meeting to share your idea and get buy-in….
→ why are we here
→ who is the decision maker
→ what is the decision to make
→ what is the recommendation and why
→ Slides 2+ = appendix to support recommendation
The decision maker can either agree with the proposed recommendation (and you’ve successfully conducted a 5 minute meeting)
OR you dive into the appendix with the supporting information gathered to support the recommendation and discuss further.
Step 9: Empower Accountability
Create a no agenda = no attendance rule for the company. Meetings are the most expensive use of your team’s time.
Park it in a parking lot. When someone starts “thinking out loud” respectfully say “we need to keep the train on track and will be parking that in a parking lot for this meeting” and add 5 points to your corporate jargon bingo card.
Step 10: Recap
Recaps should be just the facts.
Use bullet points
State what was decided
What will be done
Who is responsible for doing it
When it will be done
And nothing else
Wasn't that easier to read?
Pro Level: Use AI to record the meeting and transcribe and auto-tag when someone is mentioned. Start training your teams to use phrasing like “let’s make sure Jeff follows up with Tim on the sales training plan” so AI can work for you. A few resources to check out are Fathom and Fireflies.
♟️ YOUR TURN:
A reminder: 80% of your results will come from the 20% of the work you do. So choose wisely. Guard your (and your teams') time to push your roadmap and goals further and faster.
Use my 10 step guide to better meeting culture and help everyone get time and energy back in their day.
Step 1: Do we know what success looks like?
Step 2: Do we know how we will achieve it?
Step 3: Stop the Seagulls
Step 4: Create a reliable Operating Rhythm
Step 5: Spirit Week Meeting Schedule
Step 6: Identify the DRI & Decision Maker
Step 7: Make every meeting invite SOAR
Step 8: Try the One Slide Meeting
Step 9: A Culture of Accountability
Step 10: Just the Facts Recaps
🧩 Life’s A Game Newsletter | 2x Founder + 3x CMO + 3x Mom + Building 3 companies | Prev @EY_US @theknot @house__of__Wise | 📚First book coming 2025