You will be able to judge whether a meeting is needed and who must attend.
Look at your calendar for next week. Count the hours already blocked for meetings, then count how many of those meetings you came out of last week knowing something you couldn't have read in five minutes. For many people the second number is uncomfortably small.
Bad meetings rarely start bad. Someone has a question, a calendar invite is the easiest way to get people together, and the half-hour gets booked by reflex. This lesson is about the moment before you click send on that invite, because it's the cheapest moment to fix a meeting, often by not having it.
A meeting is the right tool when people need to talk to each other, rather than simply take something in. That comes down to three jobs.
Discussion: the problem isn't solved yet and the answer will come from people building on each other's ideas, testing them and pushing back.
A decision among several people: three teams have to agree a launch date, and each has constraints the others don't know about. Chat threads on this kind of decision tend to stall, as lesson 2.4, Know when to stop typing and talk, pointed out.
Building a relationship: a kick-off with a new client, the first meeting with a new team, a conversation after something went wrong. Being in the same room or on video does work here that no message can.
Everything else is informing, and informing is usually better done by message. An update, an announcement, a plan for people to note. People read faster than you can speak, and they can read when it suits them, so a written update saves time on both sides. If you catch yourself planning a meeting where you'll talk for 25 minutes and others will listen, send it as an email and offer a short call for questions.
The cost of a meeting isn't its length. It's the length times the number of people in it. A one-hour meeting with eight people uses eight working hours, which is roughly one person's entire day. A 30-minute weekly update with ten people uses five hours every week, about 250 hours over a year.
Nobody sees that cost on the calendar, because each person only sees their own hour. But it's real. Those are hours not spent on the work the meeting is meant to support.
Doing the multiplication changes decisions. Nadia, a team lead at a logistics firm in Jurong, ran a Monday status meeting for twelve people. Each person spoke for about three minutes, and most listened to updates that had nothing to do with them. She did the sum: an hour, twelve people, every week. She replaced it with a shared document everyone filled in by Monday 10am, and kept a 20-minute call on Wednesdays for the four or five people with blockers to solve. The people and figures here are an example, but the arithmetic works the same for any team.
Once you've decided you need a meeting, the next question is who. Invite three kinds of people:
People who decide. Without them, the meeting can only produce a recommendation. People who do the work. They know what is actually possible and by when. People who hold information the discussion needs, such as finance for a budget question or the client lead for a client question.
Everyone else gets the notes. That includes people who would like to know, people who are senior and might feel left out, and people you invite out of habit. Sending the notes the same day, which lesson 6.4, Close with actions, owners and dates, covers, means no one misses out on what was decided.
Many people stay on invites they don't need out of politeness. Make it easy to leave. A line in the invite such as "Optional for design: we'll send notes" lets people drop off without feeling rude.
A small meeting is also a better meeting. With four people, everyone talks. With twelve, most people listen, a few dominate and the decision takes longer.
Calendars default to 30 or 60 minutes, and meetings fill the time they're given. They also run back to back, so people arrive late from the last one and leave early for the next.
Default to shorter slots instead, such as 25 or 50 minutes. Google Calendar and Outlook both have settings that end meetings a few minutes early. That gap lets people get a drink, walk to the next room or switch video calls, and arrive on time. If you find a 25-minute meeting regularly finishes its agenda with ten minutes to spare, cut it to 15.
Before booking or accepting a meeting you own, ask four questions. Does this need discussion, a group decision or a relationship, or is it really informing? Who must be there, and who could read the notes? How short could it be? And could it be one meeting a fortnight instead of every week? Start with the recurring meetings on your calendar, since they cost the most and get questioned the least.
Review the meetings you own next week and decide for each whether it could be a message, shorter or smaller.
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