One legacy of the ever-shifting post-pandemic landscape of remote, hybrid, and in-person office setups is an (unnecessary) spike in meetings in an attempt to tighten team bonds. But more often than not, these meetings gobble up time that could be better allocated to more genuine, personalized interactions or given back altogether for focused work.
Not to mention the time and mental energy it takes to actually schedule all these extra meetings (which we call coordination tax) decreases employee productivity, and ultimately costs companies millions of dollars annually. To put it neatly, employees’ wasted time is one of the biggest wastes of company resources.
As teams become more dispersed, the tendency to ramp up meetings makes logical sense. When we don’t see each other in the office kitchen, we seek out opportunities for connection. Yet the reality is that increasing meetings misses the mark, sapping teams of productivity and dragging down morale. Companies need to curtail meeting time without sacrificing personal connection.
3 Ways to Improve Collaboration
- Replace meetings with office hours or workshops.
- Understand why you’re meeting.
- Find collaboration tools.
Slashing the Coordination Tax
You can increase the velocity of an organization as a whole by getting the right people in the right place at the right time. But this is easier said than done. We need to determine what times our teams are doing their best work. Maybe that means we allow them to focus during those times and avoid meetings.
Rescheduling is a problem in itself. I like to call the time spent trying to schedule a meeting a “coordination tax.” We’ve all seen meetings get scheduled and then rescheduled again and again. It’s tiring, and it takes a ton of time. Although one-on-ones may be relatively easy to reschedule, it’s exponentially harder with larger team gatherings or particularly busy execs.
With tools like Clockwise, you can mark events as “flexible” so that they occur at the best time during the day or week. Even making your company’s Google calendars public can help resolve this problem. Avoid the “what time can you meet” shuffle and instead make it the norm to schedule calls and make them modifiable by participants if things need to change.
Further, tools like Granola.so enable teams to record meetings so that if one person can’t attend, they’ll be able to catch up and seven other calendars don’t have to change when life inevitably happens. I also encourage teammates to use tools like Loom to help reduce meetings and communicate in a human way asynchronously, ensuring that teammates are working at times of day that make the most sense to them.
Office hours or workshops are great meeting alternatives. By scheduling office hours or workshops with experts at the company in various subjects, hosts can choose ideal timing and those joining know they’ll get answers to their questions. This approach avoids adding a meeting and the accompanying coordination time sink. When a team is extremely cross-collaborative (like a data team, for example), pre-scheduled office hours can mean the difference between five short meetings — and countless pings — smattered throughout the week and one dedicated block to help other teams with their requests. You can hold this period at a time that makes sense for team flow and focus. Plus, teams attending know they’ll get their questions answered.
Assess the Purpose of Meetings
Understanding the value and impact of meetings helps avoid an unnecessarily crowded calendar. Keeping connection alive in a remote workplace is about striking the right balance between understanding the when and the why behind a meeting in the first place. Is it for managerial purposes, team coordination or maintaining team rituals? Taking time to think about why we meet before hitting “schedule” sounds intuitive, but people don’t always do it. It can be the difference between truly useful meetings and those that can be replaced with other strategies.
The goal isn’t just to cut down the number of meetings. We want to ensure that when we do meet, it’s time well spent. With a leaner meeting schedule, people are more likely to come prepared, pitch in and contribute, instead of showing up drained from Zoom fatigue.
Set expectations from the start on when a meeting is appropriate at your organization to guarantee every meeting adds value. Define the type of meeting you’re having, whether that’s to align, make a decision, brainstorm, etc., in order to inform your meeting. When participants know the meeting type and goal, they’re all working together to make it more efficient. It also helps organizers figure out who exactly needs to be in a meeting. Can that person be optional? Should we let them determine whether this is a good use of their time or decide that for them?
This understanding of meetings can happen as early as onboarding, and I suggest it should become a part of training. New teammates need to know that saving time and collaborating without increasing meetings is a priority. Provide the team with suggestions to avoid being bogged down with meetings, and equip them with the understanding up front of when a meeting is essential and when it isn’t.
Pick the Right Tools
Ensuring the mode of communication fits your purpose can make all the difference in maintaining clarity, connection and productivity. Plus, it spares everyone from that all-too-familiar “this could’ve been an email” frustration.
A Slack message or Google Doc comment is great for straightforward directives or quick feedback, but these methods often don’t capture the full nuance necessary for effective feedback. Loom is one of my favorites in these situations. Recording your screen and body language offers context and emotion. Plus, the recipient can watch the video at their convenience, improving the likelihood that they retain and implement the feedback.
In all-hands meetings, I prefer to have all participants in gallery view, with video turned on, to foster a sense of unity and engagement. If it’s the only time we’re all seeing each other, large meetings like this can be opportunities to put faces to names. It’s also easy to disengage in those meetings because most of the time, employees aren’t themselves presenting. Staying on video can improve social connection, especially in a remote world.
Conversely, in a team sync focused on reviewing results, a clear agenda with the right people present to participate in the conversation is more important than being on camera. For these more tactical conversations, it may not be as important to see facial reactions, and this could be an opportunity to reduce Zoom fatigue and remain off video.
Fewer Meetings, More Connection
In reality, meetings aren't going anywhere, but companies can be a lot more intelligent and intentional in how and when they happen. By embracing flexibility, focusing on what truly requires synchronous discussion, and using technology to handle the routine, we can keep our human connections strong without engendering meeting overload. This balance is good for our schedules, great for our work culture, and even better for our collective sanity.
