How to Reduce Unnecessary Meetings

Anyone else suffer from meeting overload? It’s a big deal. Simply put too many meetings means less time available for actual work, plus constantly attending meetings can be mentally draining, and often they simply are not required to accomplish the agenda items. At the same time sometimes it’s unavoidable. No matter where you are in your career, here are a few ways that I tackle this topic so that I can be my best and hold myself accountable to how my time is spent. I take 15 minutes every Friday to look at the week ahead and what is on my calendar. I follow these tips to ensure what is on the calendar should be and that I’m prepared. It ensures that I have a relevant and focused communications approach, and enables me to focus on optimizing productivity, outcomes and impact. 1. Review the meeting agenda. If there’s no agenda I send an email asking for one so you know exactly what you need to prepare for, and can ensure your time is correctly prioritized. You may discover you’re actually not the correct person to even attend. If it’s your meeting, set an agenda because accountability goes both ways. 2. Define desired outcomes. What do you want/need from the meeting to enable you to move forward? Be clear about it with participants so you can work collaboratively towards the goal in the time allotted. 3. Confirm you need the meeting. Meetings should be used for difficult or complex discussions, relationship building, and other topics that can get lost in text-based exchanges. A lot of times though we schedule meetings that we don’t actually require a meeting to accomplish the task at hand. Give ourselves and others back time and get the work done without that meeting. 4. Shorten the meeting duration. Can you cut 15 minutes off your meeting? How about 5? I cut 15 minutes off some of my recurring meetings a month ago. That’s 3 hours back in a week I now have to redirect to high impact work. While you’re at it, do you even need all those recurring meetings? It’s never too early for a calendar spring cleaning. 5. Use meetings for discussion topics, not FYIs. I save a lot of time here. We don’t need to speak to go through FYIs (!) 6. Send a pre-read. The best meetings are when we all prepare for a meaningful conversation. If the topic is a meaty one, send a pre-read so participants arrive with a common foundation on the topic and you can all jump straight into the discussion and objectives at hand. 7. Decline a meeting. There’s nothing wrong with declining. Perhaps you’re not the right person to attend, or there is already another team member participating, or you don’t have bandwidth to prepare. Whatever the reason, saying no is ok. What actions do you take to ensure the meetings on your calendar are where you should spend your time? It’s a big topic that we can all benefit from, please share your tips in the comments ⤵️ #careertips #productivity #futureofwork

I used to default to “let’s sync” for everything. Status updates, feedback, quick questions—all meetings. It was just... what we did. Then I looked at my calendar and realized: half of my weekly recurring meetings probably didn’t need to be meetings at all. So I started asking a different question: “Does this one actually need real-time collaboration?” Here’s the framework I used to determine which meetings were actually necessary and which ones were just habit: 1️⃣ Is it urgent? 2️⃣ What’s the goal of collaborating? 3️⃣ How many people are involved? 4️⃣ Will one person be talking the whole time? 5️⃣ How complex is the topic? I went through my calendar and asked these questions for every single meeting.   📆 What stayed as meetings: ↳ Strategy sessions: The decisions that needed real-time conversation. The moments where we actually needed to think together, not just transfer information. ↳ Time-sensitive decisions: Topics that needed to be addressed quickly (both important and urgent).   💻 What turned into Loom videos: ↳ “Quick syncs” that were really just questions: Two minutes instead of a 15-minute meeting on both of our calendars. ↳ Status reports: My boss can review them at her convenience and leave comments asynchronously. ↳ Team updates: We share regular updates to stay on the same page, track our progress, and catch problems and roadblocks before they happen. ↳ Feedback sessions: I can walk through what needs to change, show examples, and they can rewatch and absorb without the pressure of real-time response. My calendar went from packed to intentional. Not empty, but intentional. That’s the difference. But more than that—the meetings I kept actually mattered now. ✅ I got back HOURS of uninterrupted focus time. ✅ There was space for real conversation instead of rushing through an agenda. ✅ I learned to batch things that weren’t urgent. No rush means no need to interrupt. The framework isn’t about eliminating meetings. It’s about being intentional about which ones deserve real-time collaboration and which ones don’t. 🚫 (Spoiler alert: most don’t.) And the ones that do? They’re so much better when you’re not exhausted from back-to-back calls all day. What would your calendar look like if you applied these five questions to every meeting on it? Just pick 1️⃣ this week. Ask the questions. See what shifts. P.S. Want the full framework? Check out the Atlassian Team Playbook’s “Think Before You Sync” Play. It’s the decision tree I use when I’m building my calendar each week. Link in the comments.

After 30+ years of leading teams, sitting in boardrooms, and surviving more calendar invites than I care to count 📅… here’s a hard-won truth: Most meetings could have been emails. I don’t say this lightly. I’ve been the new manager who scheduled the standing meeting 📆 “because that’s what leaders do.” I’ve been the exec dialing into 9 back-to-back calls 🎧 wondering why I wasn’t getting any actual work done. And I’ve been the CMO who finally asked, “What if we just… didn’t?” 🤔 Here’s what I’ve learned: ✉ Information-sharing belongs in an email. 🎥 Collaboration deserves a meeting. 🧠 Problem-solving deserves the right brains in the room — and only the right brains. ⏱ Everything else just steals time from deep work, creative thinking, and execution. Time is the most expensive resource we have ⏳— more than media budgets, more than tech stacks. Every unnecessary meeting is an invisible tax on your team’s productivity 💸. And if you add up the hours wasted company-wide… it’s not just annoying, it’s expensive. So here’s the life lesson: be ruthless with your calendar. Cancel standing meetings that no longer serve a purpose ❌. Move updates to Slack, email, or a shared doc. When you do call a meeting, make it count — tight agenda, clear outcomes, and the smallest room that gets the job done. Your team will thank you 🙌. Your CFO will thank you 💰. And you might even get some thinking time back 🧘. How about you — what’s your go-to “meeting detox” move? #Leadership #CMO #WorkCulture #Productivity #Meetings

Packed calendars don’t just happen. Leaders allow them. Meeting overload doesn’t happen by accident. It builds one approval at a time. Every recurring invite you accept sets a standard. Every bloated attendee list you ignore reinforces it. Every meeting that could have been written trains your team what’s normal. Over time, the calendar fills itself. Too many meetings usually signal: • Decisions delayed instead of made • Updates shared live instead of written • People included “just in case” • Leaders equating visibility with value Meetings expand to fill the space you allow them to take. If your week feels fragmented, it isn’t random. It’s patterned behavior. Here’s how to reset it: 1️⃣ Default to Decline If you are not a decision maker or direct contributor, don’t attend. Being informed is not the same as being required. 2️⃣ Shrink the Invite List Every extra person reduces clarity. Invite owners, not observers. 3️⃣ Shorten the Standard Make 25 minutes the norm, not 30. Make 50 the norm, not 60. Force focus. 4️⃣ Remove Recurring Privilege Recurring meetings expire unless they justify renewal. No auto-renewing calendar debt. 5️⃣ Write Before You Meet If an update can be written, write it. Use meeting time for discussion, not reporting. 6️⃣ End Early on Purpose If the decision is made, stop. Finishing early resets expectations. 7️⃣ Track Your Meeting Ratio How much of your week is coordination versus execution? If meetings dominate, something needs to change. Leaders who protect their calendars protect their teams’ output. 💾 Save this if you’re ready to reduce unnecessary meetings. ➕ Follow Rene Madden, ACC for practical leadership systems that reduce friction.

$36,000,000,000… That’s how much money U.S. businesses waste every year in useless meetings. That’s the equivalent of having 600,000 people each making $60,000 to sit in an office all day and do absolutely nothing. At Process Street, we’ve eliminated 90% of our “useless meeting time” And we made a guide on how we did it… It’s called, How to Run Business Meetings That Aren’t a Complete Waste of Time: 1. have clear objectives EVERY meeting needs a clear, written statement identifying the purpose of the meeting. The same way you hold an employee accountable to goals, you need to hold a meeting accountable to its objective. A good objective of a meeting could be the executive team discussing a strategic change and how to roll it out to the company A bad objective would be a roundtable status update that could’ve been an email. 2. Invite the right people If the meeting is not relevant to someone’s work. They are better off missing the meeting and just doing their work. 3. Stick to the agenda Do not just walk in to a 60-90 minute calendar block and start to casually talk about the objective. That’s a recipe for wasted time. Instead, decide what is going to be discussed in the meeting beforehand, set an agenda, and allot time for each specific item. Send the agenda to people inside the meeting before it begins. If they understand and can visualize the agenda throughout the meeting, it’s WAY more likely the agenda is actually followed. 4. Don’t let it be derailed Most meetings get derailed and off topic, especially when someone starts rambling. Whoever is in charge of the meeting needs to rule it with an iron fist and frankly cut people off if they get off topic. My policy here is to interrupt the rambler first and ask for forgiveness later. It may be a rude thing to do, but every 5 minutes someone rambles could mean 1 hour of wasted time if 12 other people are in the meeting. 5. Start and end on time If you have flex time where people can show up a minute or two late, or the meeting can go a minute or two over to finish the conversation, then you’ll always have meetings where both of those things happen. Just as you would hold the meeting accountable to its objective, hold it accountable to the clock. 6. No distractions Have you ever been in a meeting with someone constantly checking their phone? Or a zoom call where it’s obvious someone is doing emails? Create a 0 tolerance policy for this. Or, if someone believes they can check out of the conversation, they probably should have not been involved in the first place. 7. Create memos Meetings are useless without stated outcomes. Whatever the objective of the meeting was, create a memo with notes on who talked about what, key takeaways, action items, and whether the objective was completed or not. Then, share the memo with everyone who was in the meeting. Follow this process and I promise you'll run meetings 90% better than you currently are.

"There are just too many damn meetings." This is the #1 complaint I hear from my clients, when speaking at conferences, or via conversations here on LinkedIn (and it's been shared over and over by folks asking for the Ideal Week template I shared recently). Okay. It's time to stop complaining. Meetings don't have to suck. After over 28 years in corporate leadership and coaching hundreds of senior leaders, I've discovered something: Bad meetings aren't always a problem with time management. There's a clarity problem. Here's what we have to fix: The framework in this post is what I actually use whether it's in the boardroom or with founders in two-person startups. This is a real implementation framework that reduces meeting time by at least 25% while significantly improving decision quality. Three rules that matter: Rule #1: Every meeting must have a stated goal. At the beginning. With clear expectations. With a time-bound focus. No goal? No meeting. I start every client session the same way: "What's the most important thing we need to discuss today?" Sometimes we need to pivot from what has been prepared, and sometimes we just need to focus our attention. Your calendar is a strategic asset. Protect it like your bank account. Rule #2: There are only three reasons to have a meeting: 1. To decide. Determine what needs to be done that will lead to action. 2. To communicate. Create an environment to enhance what needs to be shared by leveraging vocal and visual mediums. 3. To brainstorm. Leverage the combined talents and perspectives to create something special. Doesn't fit into one of these three categories? Send an email. Record a video. Write it down. Stop defaulting to meetings because it feels easier than thinking clearly. Rule #3: Be willing to cancel. No goal, no purpose, no meeting. The best teams I work with don't wait to cancel unnecessary meetings. They've embraced the opportunity to always ask: "What's the goal here?" Enroll your people in this. Be willing to cancel any meeting if it's not clear why you are there. Share this framework with your teams. Let them help govern the calendar. End every meeting with one question: "Who will do what by when?" Meetings don't suck because they exist. They suck when we treat them like default calendar fillers instead of an opportunity to accomplish something intentional. When you control your meetings, you're showing everyone around you that intentionality isn't optional. I'm building plug-and-play templates that make this system work for any team size. Message or comment "MEETINGS" and I'll send them with notes on how we actually use them. What's the one meeting on your calendar this week that probably shouldn't exist? #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveCoaching #TimeManagement #IntentionalLeadership

Most meetings suck - suck time, energy, and productivity. I know I'm not alone in being over the endless meeting workday. For startups (or anyone building), time is the most precious resource. If you're always meeting, when do you have time to actually build the thing? It's time to challenge the status quo and reimagine our meeting culture. And not just because it’s a driving culprit behind Sunday Scaries! Here's why: 💸 A Doodle study found pointless meetings cost U.S. businesses $399 billion in 2019. How much runway are you burning in conference rooms? 📆 Atlassian reports employees spend 31 hours monthly in unproductive meetings. That's four workdays lost! 😨 Harvard Business Review research shows 65% of senior managers say meetings keep them from completing work. In startups, that's innovation suicide. ⏱️ According to Korn Ferry, 71% of professionals lose time weekly due to unnecessary meetings. Can you afford this when racing for product-market fit? 😴 Atlassian's survey revealed 91% of employees daydream during meetings, 39% have fallen asleep. How can you disrupt markets with a snoozing team? 👀 Doodle found only 50% of meeting time is spent engaging with content. Would you accept this from your code? It's time for a radical shift. Here are some ideas we’ve been kicking around: ⏳ Implement a "Meeting Budget": Allocate a fixed amount of time for meetings each week. Once it's gone, it's gone. This forces prioritization and efficiency. 🍕 "Two-Pizza Rule": If two pizzas can't feed the group, the meeting's too large. Smaller groups tend to be more focused and decisive. 💻 Smarter Async Communication: Use tools to determine what needs real-time interaction. If a topic requires more than 6 Slack exchanges, it might be time for a quick sync. 🙅🏻♀️ "No-Meeting Days": Designate specific days for deep work, free from interruptions. This can significantly boost productivity and creative output. 📋 Use POP Agenda: This is a game-changer for meeting efficiency. Here's how it works: - Purpose: Clearly state why you're meeting. Is it for decision-making, brainstorming, or alignment? - Outcomes: Define 2-3 specific results you need by the end of the meeting. - Process: Outline how you'll use the time to achieve those outcomes. POP keeps everyone focused and gives permission to redirect when discussions stray. It works for everything from quick check-ins to marathon brainstorming sessions. (One of my favorite frameworks I’ve ever used!) Let's stop sucking the life out of our organizations with needless meetings. The future of innovation depends on it. How has your team cut meeting fat and started sprinting faster?

Senior leaders: It’s time to stop having so many 1:1s. Yes, I said it. And I’ve said it 𝘵𝘰 CEOs, COOs, and executive teams across industries a thousand times. Why? Because too many 1:1s at the top don’t align or accelerate anything—they fragment decision-making, reinforce silos, and often become political currency cloaked in “access.” I’ve seen it firsthand in my client work. When execs spend their days in private conversations, the organization ends up needing a translator just to keep up. I’ve been advising leaders for years to shift from private, function-based conversations to shared, capability-based ones. It’s more efficient, yes—but it’s also more honest, strategic, and aligned with how value is actually created. In my latest piece for Harvard Business Review, I share what happens when you make this shift—with examples from leaders like Melissa, who found that 𝘩𝘦𝘳 1:1s weren’t just draining her capacity—they were undermining her team’s cohesion. Here’s my take on this: 𝘔𝘢𝘬𝘦 1:1𝘴 𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺—𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭. 𝘚𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘤 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰 1:2 𝘰𝘳 1:3 “𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺” 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴. 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘰—𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮-𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴. You don’t need more meetings. You need the right people in the room, listening for the right reasons. What have you seen excessive 1x1s at the senior level do in your organizations or the ones you support? https://hubs.la/Q03wm5Hg0 #leadership #meetings #culture #productivity

Excessive meetings are a symptom of a deeper cultural issue—a lack of trust and clarity. We need to shift from a meeting-heavy culture to one rooted in empowerment and intentional communication. “When you don't know what to do, you do meetings.", said Abilio Diniz. All too often, excessive meetings are not a sign of productivity—they’re a substitute for clear process, strong written communication, and a lack of trust.  The constant meeting-to-meeting shuffle also is sacrificing our wellbeing. We talk about flexibility, but then we glue people to their desks with back-to-back calls. That constant 'on' pressure eats away at the personal time needed for simple, intentional self-care that sustains performance.  If we genuinely believe in "People first. Profits follow," we must be principled about how we spend our collective time.  Here is the simple, intentional routine I am trying to adopt with my team: 1. Stop and Ask: Is This Recurring Meeting Necessary? Too many meetings survive purely out of habit. Be deliberate. Review the real-time value and be unafraid to kill a ritual 2. Make Pre-Work the Standard, Not the Exception. If a meeting must happen, it should be a decision-making session, not an information-sharing one. Better written communication and pre-reading (like a concise memo or video update) should always come first.  3. Define Intentional Involvement: Inform, Consult, or Support. Not everyone needs to be in the room. This is about respect for time and clarity on roles: • Inform: Send an email, a video message, or a quick gchat update. Free their calendar (these days, this is a gift, not a punishment) • Consult: Bring them in on a need-to-know, on-demand basis. • Support: These are the essential, daily contributors who need to be fully involved. True leadership is about empowerment, not micromanagement in the form of endless meetings. #Leadership #Wellbeing #WorkLifeIntegration #Productivity #BusinessStrategy #Wellhub

Too many meetings? A new study challenges many things we think we know about meeting overload. Here's what the researchers discovered. 1) Size matters For small teams (under 6 people), "meet when needed" works beautifully. But there's a tipping point: as teams grow larger, flexible scheduling becomes a disaster. With larger teams, someone will almost always want to meet (of course!), leading to constant interruptions. 2) Too few meetings Surprisingly, the study found that teams often suffer more from too few meetings than too many! Workers reported more frustration when they couldn't coordinate (missing crucial alignments) than when they had to attend "unnecessary" meetings. Example: A developer needing input on architecture decisions might waste days going in the wrong direction because they couldn't get timely coordination with colleagues. 3) Smart rules beat simple rules In diverse teams (different roles, productivity levels, schedules), basic rules like "meet every Monday" aren't enough. The research recommends these approaches instead: - Minimum gaps between meetings (e.g., 48 hours of focus time) - Maximum time without meetings (e.g., never go more than 5 days) - Multiple-person approval for new meetings Example: A software team might block off Tuesday/Thursday mornings as "no meeting zones" while requiring at least two developers to agree before scheduling additional meetings. 4) Fixed meetings For larger teams, standing meetings (e.g., every Friday at 3 PM) are remarkably effective. The data shows they never perform worse than 28% below optimal efficiency - making them a reliable choice, especially as teams scale. 5) The Hybrid Sweet Spot The most successful approaches combine: - Protected "quiet time" where meetings are prohibited - Designated "interaction time" when coordination is encouraged - This structured flexibility helps balance individual productivity with team alignment. Quick recap: As your team grows beyond 6-10 people, shift from ad-hoc scheduling to more structured approaches. But don't make them rigid - add smart safeguards to maintain flexibility while preventing both meeting overload and coordination drought. Source: Roels, G., & Corbett, C. J. (2024). Too Many Meetings? Scheduling Rules for Team Coordination. Management Science, 70(12), 8647–8667.