Meeting Culture: REDO Your Way to Better Collaboration

Get rid of unnecessary meetings and optimize those worth having

Organizations have a love-hate relationship with meetings. While some can't live without them, others believe they should be eliminated.

While meetings per se aren't the problem, having too many – or poorly designed ones – definitely is. A study by Slack shows that productivity suffers when people spend more than two hours a day in meetings. That's the tipping point.

Interestingly, this view isn't universally shared. The same survey found that younger employees or those with less than a year on the job think they spend too little time in meetings. Clearly, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach.

While I strongly advocate for asynchronous-first collaboration, that doesn't mean that all meetings should be eliminated. As I explain in my book, Remote Not Distant, real-time or synchronous collaboration is more effective to make critical decisions, drive alignment, and address urgent topics – to name a few.

The key to fixing your meeting culture lies in being deliberate and consistent. This r…