Meetings
Battle testedWhich meetings should exist, which should become writing, and how to audit, cut and run the ones that stay.
Should this be a meeting?
Up to six questions. The rust line is your path. Each faint branch is where the other answer leads. Turn the dial to your stage; slide or type your headcount.
Is a decision needed?
- No: More questions
- Yes: More questions
Is the purpose only to share information one way?
- Yes: Write it
- No: More questions
Is it a sensitive or relationship conversation, such as feedback, conflict, bad news or trust-building?
- Yes: Hold it live
- No: Run an async thread
Can the decision be reversed within a week or two at low cost?
- Yes: More questions
- No: More questions
Is there one named owner for this decision?
- Yes: The owner decides
- No: Name the owner first
Is there a written doc of 1 to 6 pages with the options, a recommendation and what would change your mind?
- No: Write the doc first
- Yes: More questions
Do people need to react to each other in real time, because views conflict or the trade-offs are hard?
- No: Comment in the doc
- Yes: Hold a decision meeting
Write it
Send a short update or a short recorded video, posted where the reader already looks. No meeting. GitLab makes written, time-shifted updates the default.
Hold it live
One to one where possible, in person when you can. GitLab’s guidance says async is the wrong tool for a hard conversation.
Run an async thread
Name an owner and set a respond-by date. Move to a 20-minute call if it is still open after one full round or a week.
The owner decides
They write one line in the decision log and tell the affected people. No meeting. Bezos says reversible two-way door decisions should be made quickly by small groups or individuals.
Name the owner first
A decision meeting with no decision-maker is a discussion that triggers another meeting. Google’s re:Work guidance names one leader per meeting who makes the final call.
Write the doc first
Do not schedule yet. The author writes it, and big decisions need real time: Bezos says a great memo probably takes a week or more.
Comment in the doc
Collect comments in the doc until a stated date. The owner closes it and logs the decision.
Hold a decision meeting
Silent read first, then discussion. The owner states the decision before the end and logs it. Invite only people who decide or are directly affected.
Answer the last question to see your outcome.
Stage
Efficiency savers
What each step saves. Where nobody publishes the number, it says so.
Bulk purge of recurring meetings
Shopify’s COO said 322,000 hours were deleted in about a month for about 10,000 employees, equal to about 150 hires. A company claim, not independently checked.
NPR (OPB), Shopify and 322,000 hours: secondary source (opens in a new tab)No-meeting days
MIT Sloan studied 76 companies using 1 to 5 days. 47% cut meetings by 40% with two days, and results were best at three. Surveys, no control group.
MIT Sloan Management Review, meeting-free days: primary source (opens in a new tab)Convert status updates to writing
No verified published data. An 8-person, 60-minute weekly status meeting is 8 hours. Writing for 10 minutes each plus a 30-minute read is about 2. Roughly 6 hours saved.
Estimate, no published data: estimateSilent read plus memo
Qualitative only. Bezos says it stops people bluffing through the meeting and guarantees attention. No time-saving data.
Amazon, 2017 shareholder letter: primary source (opens in a new tab)Agenda or cancel
No published data. Rogelberg warns an agenda alone does nothing.
Rogelberg, APA Monitor: secondary source (opens in a new tab)Protect a weekly quiet block
No reliable benchmark found for the time it returns. The saving is focus time. Measure it in your own calendar.
Practice: practice
The routines
Each step has an owner, a time cost and a document. Costs marked estimate are worked out, not published data.
Export the calendar
Four weeks of recurring meetings: title, organiser, attendees, length, recurrence.
Cost it
Attendees times loaded hourly cost times length. No reliable benchmark found for a typical cost per meeting hour. Bain found one weekly executive committee meeting drove about 300,000 person-hours a year across 17 large firms once preparation was counted.
Tag each meeting
Decide, inform, relationship, work session or no clear purpose. Name the decision it produces.
Run each through the tree
Convert information meetings to writing, kill the ones with no purpose, shorten the rest.
Publish the rules
Agenda 24 hours ahead or the meeting is cancelled. A named decision owner. Notes in the doc. A quiet block each week.
Re-audit
Repeat each quarter and compare hours before and after.
State the purpose
Two sentences: the purpose and the decision, if there is one.
Write the brief
The update or proposal. Name the decision owner and set a respond-by date.
Open a comment window
Participants comment in the thread. 24 to 48 hours is a working rule, not a finding.
Call if still open
If it is open after one round, move to a 20-minute call.
Close and record
The owner closes the decision by the respond-by date.
Write the memo
Up to six pages in full sentences, not bullets. Options, recommendation, what would change my mind, risks.
Read in silence
Everyone reads at the start of the meeting. Fortune reports up to 30 minutes for Amazon’s executive team.
Discuss the disagreement
Spend the time where views differ, led by someone other than the author.
State the decision
The owner says the decision and next steps before the meeting ends.
Write the purpose in the invite
One sentence, and the decision it produces.
Send the agenda
24 hours ahead, or cancel. An agenda alone does not make a meeting effective, so pair it with one named decision owner.
Invite fewer people
Decision-makers and the directly affected. Others read the notes.
Shorten the default
Bain notes the usual default is 60 minutes. Choosing 25 or 50 is a working rule.
Send notes and actions
In the same doc, within a day.
Renew or sunset
A sunset date, or a renewal check each quarter.
How meeting rules go wrong
Failure modes
- Purge rebound
Meetings creep back after the reset. Shopify said excess meetings had crept back before its purge. Audit quarterly and require a two-week wait before re-adding.
- Leaders break the rule
The founder books over the quiet block. Leaders obey first, and the ops lead can decline on their behalf.
- Async overload
Threads replace meetings and never close. Set respond-by dates, and call for 20 minutes after one round.
- Memo bureaucracy
Six-pagers for small decisions. Use the tree: only one-way doors need a memo.
The biases behind them
- Parkinson’s law
The meeting expands to fill the slot. Use a shorter default and a hard stop.
- Planning fallacy
Agenda times are underestimated. Cut the agenda by a third and carry the rest to a thread.
- Sunk cost
You keep a standing meeting because it exists. Give it a sunset date and ask whether you would start it today.
- Status quo bias
Sixty minutes because the calendar says so. Change the default.
Who owns the calendar
Set by the dial on the instrument. It follows your headcount until you turn it.
- Runs it
- Founder or CEO, with a co-founder as backup.
- You keep
- All meeting decisions.
- Hand off
- Nothing yet.
My stance
At four people the meeting is the work. I would still ban status meetings and write one-line decisions down.
- Runs it
- CEO, with the first ops hire or a Chief of Staff as backup.
- You keep
- The staff meeting and the decision meetings.
- Hand off
- The calendar audit and the decision log.
My stance
Run the first audit at ten people, not fifty. Convert every update meeting to writing and keep one weekly leadership meeting.
- Runs it
- Head of ops or Chief of Staff, with an executive assistant or ops associate as backup.
- You keep
- Decision meetings on one-way doors.
- Hand off
- Scheduling rules, audits, the meeting charter, tooling.
My stance
The ops lead owns the charter and can cancel meetings with no agenda. If the founder is first to break the quiet block, the policy is dead.
- Runs it
- Chief of Staff plus function heads, with an ops lead as backup.
- You keep
- The few decision meetings only the CEO can unblock.
- Hand off
- Meeting load reports by team, the quiet-block policy.
My stance
Measure meeting hours per person by team, but set no hours target, because a target gets gamed. Use it to ask which meetings have no decision.
- Runs it
- Chief of Staff and People or Ops, with team leads as backup.
- You keep
- The strategic forums.
- Hand off
- Everything else.
My stance
Calendars fill fast at this size. Anyone can cancel a meeting that stops making sense, without asking.
Where the evidence disagrees
Was the Shopify purge a good idea?
For
Shopify’s COO said it drew more positive feedback than anything else he had done, and employees now feel free to decline meetings.
NPR (OPB), Shopify and 322,000 hours: secondary source (opens in a new tab)Against
Rogelberg says it targets the wrong thing: bad meetings are the problem, not meetings. Some on LinkedIn called it an overcorrection.
NPR (OPB), Shopify and 322,000 hours: secondary source (opens in a new tab)No independent data either way, and no one-year follow-up found.
How strong is the no-meeting-day evidence?
MIT Sloan found the best results at three days, across 76 companies with more than 1,000 employees. It relies on surveys, does not describe how the companies were chosen, and shows association, not cause.
MIT Sloan Management Review, meeting-free days: primary source (opens in a new tab)Rules by country
Works council co-determination
BetrVG §87: primary source (opens in a new tab)Tools that can monitor behaviour or performance fall under section 87(1) no. 6 BetrVG, so a works council must agree to their introduction. If it does not, the Einigungsstelle decides.
Office 365 as a monitoring device
BAG 8.3.2022, 1 ABR 20/21, via Hensche: secondary source (opens in a new tab)The Federal Labour Court held in 2022 that Office 365 is a technical device under that section, on an “objectively capable” reading. Meeting tools that log attendance or speaking time are the same question.
General information, last checked 29 Oct 2026. Not legal or tax advice.
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