How many times have you been in a meeting and thought to yourself: “This could have been an email.” You’re not alone.
Our modern work culture is inundated with quick check-ins, daily standups, recurring strategy calls and several other meetings that eat into the day. We continue to use business practices from 30 years ago, even though technology has allowed us to go from the conference room to the Slack Channel and from the whiteboard to the Figma Board.
These modern business tools allow us to move exponentially faster and get work done with less coordination and more freedom than ever before. And I know what you’re thinking: How would anything get done without meetings? Well, I think that most meetings are unnecessary. Not all meetings, but most meetings. Here’s why.
3 Benefits of Reducing Meetings
- Writing a memo instead of having a meeting saves time and leaves a searchable reference.
- It helps star performers shine.
- Employees enjoy more flexibility and feel trusted by leadership.
How Productivity Is a Double-Edged Sword
Makers want to build without distraction and managers want to meet to discuss strategy. Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, famously called this the difference between the maker and manager schedule. The difference comes down to how much work you actually get done versus how much time you spend talking about the work.
For hedge funds who execute a small number of trades per year, spending a lot of time talking about the work makes sense. But for those of us who are constantly shipping work product and iterating on the fly, having lots of meetings creates deep organizational inefficiencies and personal frustration.
But now, everyone is a maker. Whether you’re writing code in an integrated development environment or building a financial forecast in Excel, we’re all using a layer of software to move our work forward. In a world where everyone is a maker, excessive meetings slow us down and limit our flexibility.
We may have become too efficient for our own good. And this is only going to get worse with the power of AI. We form the amount of work we have to the time available. Now that we have more time due to increased efficiency, we’re in danger of filling in the schedule gaps with more meetings.
I do think meetings are required at times to align on strategy before executing. But these should be the exception to the rule.
Companies can use Slack for communication and employees can jump on a huddle whenever needed. They can still have structure and boundaries around when it’s acceptable to request a huddle. This keeps 99 percent of work asynchronous, which also gives teams flexibility to build their schedules and lives however works best for them. This work style isn’t for everyone, but for the right person, it’s a much-needed change.
Advantages of Having Fewer Meetings
Everything Is Documented and Searchable
I’d rather have one person spend 20 minutes thoughtfully craft memo than have two people meet for 15 minutes. The memo takes less time and becomes searchable later within our internal tools.
A few months later, we can look back to that memo to remember the operating assumptions we were making at the time. Forcing a culture of writing over meetings compounds value for the organization over time by keeping communication documented and searchable.
There’s a Clear Separation Between A- and B-Players
A-players communicate well, work fast and are relentless. They are often intimidating to work with, as their bar of excellence is higher than others’. B-players make excuses, slow down progress and don’t deliver on time. Having a culture with no meetings creates a clear divide between the A- and B-players.
You’ll be amazed how easy it is to see the divide when the work is solely judged based on communication and efficiency. We saw this during the Covid-19 pandemic when work shifted from in-person to remote. When there’s no water cooler to judge people on, it becomes clear who the top performers are.
Employees Are in Control of Their Schedules
With fewer scheduled meetings, employees have more personal flexibility. Employers are constantly trying to find new corporate benefits to keep employees happy. You’d be surprised by how happy people are when they are in an environment with other top performers and their employers trust them to live and work how they want.
Disadvantages of Having Fewer Meetings
More Pressure on Leadership to Write Down Strategies
Having fewer meetings forces more independent thought. Leadership can make major decisions and then communicate it afterwards. This is similar to traditional work culture, without the meetings leading up to the decision. This puts more pressure on leadership to accurately convey, via written communication, the series of assumptions that went into a decision.
Less Structure in the Daily Workflow
Without a calendar of meetings, there’s less structure for employees. This can be good or bad, depending on the employee. Less structure also implies difficulty with managing your own personal schedule as you don’t actually know when you need to be online or not.
Generally, this can be a downside of remote work. Going into an office gives employees a clear check-in and check-out time. Working from home without any meetings on your calendar can lead to a less clear divide between work and personal life.
It’s Tough to Develop Personal Relationships
Without many meetings, it’s tough to build personal rapport and interpersonal relationships. This makes the work feel more transactional. That said, your team is just that: a team — not your family. The best interpersonal relationships are built on the basis of trust and respect, not likability. A-players want to be friends with other A-players.
Regardless of the path you choose for your business, it’s important to constantly reevaluate business practices. It’s easy to become complacent with the way things are now, but keep in mind that technology now enables us to work faster than ever to grow our companies. It’s about finding the right balance that works for you.
If you want to talk about this further, please don’t ask me for a meeting. Send me an email instead.
