No meeting Wednesdays
Have you ever heard anyone say “I love meetings” or “Meetings are the best things that happen in the day”?
Every now and then, I feel meetings have gotten the best of me and I barely have time to do real work.
As I took on my new role in Jan 2018, I realized 10months later (a bit late... but better late than never, right?) I spent my hours/days/weeks in meetings to the point where there are no more actual work days.
As I started to reflect back: I had a choice to make, continue the same pattern and complain about meetings or do something about it. One of my managers at a startup had encouraged our team to block off one day “No Meeting Wednesday”. It was our day for focused, heads-down, actual work. Brilliance at its best.
Before I could encourage my team, I wanted to take this on a test drive with No Meeting Wednesday. I blocked off my calendar and hope one day that our teams and company can do the same.
At first, it sounded impossible, but at least now I have a day to think versus sporadic 30min if any between meetings to catch up.
And there are others who have benefited from the same idea:
How to take back your productivity with No Meeting Wednesday
No Meeting Wednesdays At Asana
2019 Update:
Is Your Team Spending Too Much Time In Meetings?
After learning about “no meeting Wednesdays” from a manager of mine, I decided to try it out myself before introducing it to my team. In the first month, meetings took over the blocked day. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone.
Two months later, I advocated the no meeting Wednesdays idea in team meetings and with anyone who tried to find time on my calendar on a Wednesday. I got better at saying, “How about Tuesday or Thursday instead?”
Three months later, people started to appreciate the context and intent, and they were keen to help. It’s surprising how a small idea can get everyone committed to making it a success.
I find that blocking out one day a week can allow for more focused, heads-down work to take place, and I encourage others to reflect on their team’s meeting schedules.
Does this meeting need to take place?
Meetings are meant to bring alignment and help each other, not become troublemakers. How we adopt meetings needs to evolve as technology is here to help us communicate better than we did a decade ago. It’s up to all of us to make the shift and allow meetings to be prioritized only if the conversation cannot happen over email, on Slack or even by just picking up the phone or going and talking directly with the other person involved.
Often times, it’s easier to think that you need a meeting to discuss an idea or get alignment. But the reality is often that the discussion could happen over Slack, or whichever team collaboration tool your company uses, much quicker. I am not a fan of email, and email is probably one of the last options many turn to for communication these days. It’s a means of broadcast versus conversation, in my opinion.
If there are more than 8 to 10 stakeholders whose input is crucial to the decision making, sometimes a meeting can help gather consensus much faster than chains of email threads or Slack conversations. A few good questions to ask each other before you schedule a meeting are:
“When is the right time and place for a meeting?”
“Does everyone need to be there in person, or can we leverage technology for a remote meeting?”
At Boomi, we have Zoom set up in every conference room, making it easier to engage with team members — and get their undivided attention — via video conference.
If you need to brainstorm as a group, we have found in-person meetings to be effective. But the location shouldn’t be a factor for an effective meeting. It is important for the manager/leader to make sure even remote employees feel like they are part of the conversation.
Does everyone need to attend?
Meetings should have a purpose and include only the key stakeholders who can share updates with the different groups after the meeting. Not everyone needs to be at every meeting.
Sometimes, not knowing who is a stakeholder in the discussion can lead to inviting everyone in the organization to join the meeting. I encourage team members to use their best judgment on which meetings they would like to attend, and not feel obligated to attend just because they got an invite.
Every meeting should have follow-up notes and next steps so that even those who missed the meeting can catch up. For my biweekly team meetings, I record the session in case a team member is not able to attend, and I provide the agenda before the meeting so they can share any insights prior to the meeting. We use Asana as our project management tool to capture our team agenda and follow-up or action items, and we share the video recordings with the team members so they can learn about the updates.
I believe that every day will be more worthwhile when we all align our efforts across the organization. Meetings or not, technology tools exist today to improve project communications and can help avoid having another meeting on the calendar.
I would encourage everyone to try “no meeting Wednesdays” and share your thoughts. You may choose to adopt Monday or Friday as your meeting-free day instead — whatever works best is all that matters at the end of the day.
Another idea I plan to test is getting rid of recurring meetings. I believe we should only have meetings when needed. I will keep you posted if and when I can make that a reality.
Originally published at www.forbes.com