As CEO, I eliminate meetings for my team and so should you

As a female CEO of two companies (https://weet.co/ & https://speach.me/) and a mother of two children (discover here why I created Weet: https://najette-fellache.medium.com/why-we-created-weet-the-story-c94b3df9c4e8), I know that it’s not only parents who might need to change their schedule for an appointment or ditch the commute to squeeze in a jog instead.

We all deserve autonomy over our life to spend it how we choose. Enjoyment should not wait until retirement.

If there’s one thing that is keeping remote workers from living their best lives, it’s meetings. Meetings can be long, exhausting, and a total waste of time. During the pandemic, meetings increased 13% and the number of attendees at each meeting increased by 13.5%. With the asynchronous communication tools available, we should all be having fewer meetings, not more.

As a leader, I take it as my responsibility to slash meetings. Here’s why I battle so ferociously against them and how you can too.

Unnecessary meetings are ruining remote work life

Having a few pointless meetings a week might not seem like a big deal, but it is.

Zoom fatigue is very real

Too many conference calls (or even just one) can leave a person feeling drained. The slight time delay, the lack of nonverbal cues, and the self-conscious studying of one’s own appearance all contribute to the very real phenomenon of Zoom fatigue.

“It is emotionally exhausting to see an image of yourself the entire time you are talking or listening. We tend to evaluate our words and with Zoom, we also evaluate how we look and gesture.” — Leann Poston M.D., M.B.A., M.Ed.

Video meetings not only suck up 30 to 60 minutes, but they can also dampen productivity when the meeting is over.

Meetings aren’t a viable way to track employee engagement

I have a friend who works in banking for a household name corporation. Their employees are being encouraged to constantly attend various meetings as a way to prove their participation and attendance. What a waste.

Meetings are not a viable solution for tracking employee engagement, nor should they be used in this way.

Most meetings are unproductive

Only 17% of senior executives report that their team meetings are usually a productive use of time. And 54% say that meetings at their company are too frequent and badly run. In another study, 65% of executives said that meetings keep them from completing their own work and 64% said that meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.

There are countless meetings that didn’t need to be meetings. They could have been one of these things instead:

• Sending a quick video with an asynchronous video tool (like Weet)
• Commenting on a task card in Asana or Notes
• Requesting a review of a brief in Google Docs

How to bring humanity to digital work without meetings

I understand why people want to have meetings. I don’t empathize with a lack of trust, but I do empathize with knowledge workers who hold meetings simply to bring a bit more emotion and humanity into the digital workplace. They want to build camaraderie and connections. But we need to separate out the reasons for meetings.

For most non-customer facing roles, daily standups don’t improve productivity. At our company, we have just 3 meetings per week: a global team meeting on Monday, any necessary 1:1 meetings on Wednesday, and a Happy Friday meeting the last day of the week to celebrate wins and enjoy coffee together virtually.

Any interaction between those meetings are replaced with video and audio messaging.

It’s worth noting that asynchronous communication can be both human and emotional. While task cards and spreadsheet comments might not feel very human, voice and video recordings certainly are. When recording short audio or video clips, people can bring their own personality to the table, and authentically share any concerns about the task at hand. Plus, we can tell how our teammates are doing, because you can tell a lot by the sound of someone’s voice.

Fewer meetings = more projects accomplished

The great thing about remote work is that you get to live your life the way you want to. Instead of commuting, you can hit the gym or grab coffee with a friend. Instead of eating lunch in the break room, you can enjoy your new porch furniture or start a load of laundry.

If your meetings are unnecessary, they’re eating into your day. You might skip lunch or work longer in order to finish an important project. Without those meetings, you might’ve been able to wrap up work in time to cook that new dinner recipe you’ve been meaning to try.

These are all of the pretty astounding benefits you’ll get when you cut out as many meetings as possible:

• Complete tasks in batches
• Cut off notifications and go into deep work mode
• Use the Pomodoro technique to boost your productivity
• Study and maximize personal peak performance
• Avoid context switching
• Alternate between deep work and shallow work
• Feel less stressed via better time management
• Answer questions thoughtfully, rather than immediately on a call
• Enjoy seamless teammate experiences regardless of time zone

How team managers can eliminate most meetings

Of course, employees need leaders who support them in working remotely without pointless meetings cluttering their calendars.

Here’s how our company’s team managers and I eliminate most meetings:

Cater to the new generation of knowledge workers

For Gen Z, flexible work arrangements are the most important factor when searching for a job, with 62% of this generation choosing it as their top job-hunting priority. As Gen Z ages and considers home ownership, marriage, and parenthood, we can assume that they’ll demand flexibility even more than they already do.

If you’re using meetings as a way to control people’s schedules and measure their engagement, Gen Z will see right through this tactic, and it won’t fly. You might as well adjust your approach to meetings now.

Let people work from anywhere

Tying people to metropolitan areas forces their hand. Maybe they want to buy a more affordable home, live closer to family, grow a big garden, or anything else. Allow people to work in their chosen location, so they can live the life they want. Otherwise, you risk upsetting them and losing them to a more flexible employer.

Give people the freedom to organize their own schedule

People should also be able to organize their schedule how they wish and not be tied to the 9 to 5. Maybe they would rather work earlier or later in the day. Maybe they need to take a long break to go to CrossFit. Give them the freedom to manage their time.

Replace as much synchronous work with asynchronous work as possible

Get your team in the habit of using asynchronous tools like Weet videos and voice recordings, Slack messages, and comments on collaborative work. Talk with your team about the new expectations around the company preference for asynchronous work and why it’s so important.

Not only does asynchronous communication save time, but it also capitalizes on employees’ full knowledge. Rather than reply instantly, they can take their time to provide a more nuanced response to any message, comment, or video.

Plus, async comms also yield greater transparency between (and within) teams. With meetings, only the people present know what was said. But with Slack channels, ClickUp boards, and shared Weet recordings, anyone can check-in and get up to speed.

Don’t fill agendas with a ton of regularly scheduled meetings

For most roles, regularly occurring meetings are unnecessary. Does everyone really need to meet daily? When you make good use of asynchronous tools, you’ll find that you don’t need to stuff peoples’ calendars.

Measure results — not time spent

If you’re using meetings as a way to guarantee employee engagement, that’s a big red flag that you have bad KPIs, or you’re not measuring them accurately. Revisit KPIs for each employee and how they’ll be tracked. Pay attention to these results and performance metrics instead of everyones’ meeting scheduled.

Support introverts and extroverts equally

It’s been proven that socializing is more physically draining for introverts. The average adult human can socialize for 3 hours before getting exhausted, but for introverts, this is far too long. Many introverts are happy to work from home every day. But extroverts might miss office life. Research has found that older adults are also more likely to enjoy working from home, while Gen Z wants some in-person experiences. Provide a budget so that employees can join co-working offices near them if they wish, for any reason.

Remote work can help us become more productive, and live the lives we truly want. We can’t let meetings take that away.