What If We Made Meetings Optional?

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What It’s About: Most organizations have too many meetings. And many of these are poorly managed. Furthermore, too many are not time efficient. Many tactical meetings are too long, and some strategic ones are too short. When we add in the use of collaborative social platforms like Zoom, etc, meeting experiences can also be minimized or amplified.

So What?: If we ran a totally remote company like Gitlab, with 1,600 people in 67 countries, we would have to reinvent the communication system overall. And that's what they’ve done. At Gitlab, with very few mandated exceptions, meetings are OPTIONAL. This does not mean collaborating or participating in problem solving/decision making is voluntary. It just means that almost all meetings are. However, to ensure the right people get to contribute, ALL meetings are recorded AND documented. The following is right out of Gitlab’s remote work manual:

“Have as few mandated meetings as possible. The notion of ‘optional meetings’ is absurd to those who only think in terms of synchronous communication — you're either at a meeting to contribute, or you aren't. The beauty of asynchronous is that team members can contribute to meetings that occur while they sleep.

Meetings are more easily made optional when each one has an agenda and a Google Doc attached to each invite. This allows people to contribute questions/input asynchronously in advance, and catch up on documented outcomes at a later time.

The person who called the meeting is responsible for contextualizing the outcomes. By placing this burden on the meeting organizer, it acts as a filter for whether a meeting is truly necessary. That's a big responsibility, which keeps the quantity of meetings in check.”

Now What?: This idea may sound crazy. However, it’s worth serious consideration. Think about how wasteful and unnecessary so many meetings are. We should stop being on autopilot by equating collaboration, alignment, coordination, problem solving, decision making and total communication with synchronous meetings. They may or may not be the most effective vehicle. Too often, a day's worth of meetings fill up calendars and do little to contribute results or progress of any kind. Think of the value that could be generated. On the other hand, we don’t want to fill up peoples’ valuable time trying to catch up on Google docs etc,. with meetings they didn’t attend in person. We should both reduce the number of meetings, improve their asynchronous quality, and allow for mostly optional attendance.

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

One Millennial View: How many times have you heard someone claim they were in a meeting that “could have just been an email?” I’ve heard that a lot. Unless the engagement requires some discussion, it does not need to take place in the format of a meeting.

- Garrett

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis.

What If We Made Meetings Optional?

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