Less is more – How can a team manage to have fewer meetings in the calendar?

As part of a consultancy assignment on role-based working, I was recently asked by a team how they could thin out their meeting structure. They simply wanted to have fewer meetings in their calendar. In response, I have put together the following list of reflective questions.

 

• Can the issues of a meeting be (partially) clarified by other methods or formats?
• Do as few persons as possible and as many as necessary take part in a meeting?
• Is the meeting as short as possible and as long as necessary? It does not always have to be at least the 30 minutes set by Outlook. Artificial time limitation can work.
• Are the objectives and purposes of the various meetings clearly differentiated? Can overlaps be reduced?
• Can the team agree on a maximum time budget for meetings for a certain period (e.g. per week) and then prioritize the meetings?
• How widespread is the belief “attendance = productivity” in the team? Can the team question it? How can productivity be experienced apart from meeting attendance?
• Is there a “fear of missing out”? How about a “joy of missing out”?
• Can regular jour fixes be canceled at short notice if there is perhaps nothing urgent to discuss?
• Has the team developed a “pluralistic ignorance” about the ineffectiveness of meetings? Do the team members perhaps think that they are the only ones who find a meeting ineffective but many actually agree?
• Can we prolong the time intervals of regular meetings (e.g. from weekly to fortnightly)?

 

Have fun reflecting on your own meeting culture!