To meet less, write more

Meetings are viewed as a normal activity in most companies. If you need to explore a subject, gather a group of people together and discuss it face to face. With pandemic lockdowns and many people working from home, virtual meetings have now become commonplace. However, recent studies have shown a general increase in the number of meetings for remote workers. This has led to higher stress levels as video calls demand more focus to process non-verbal cues. In this post I look at ways that we can reduce the time spent in meetings.

Are meetings our default tool?

The rise of virtual meetings is due to various reasons. Some people are making up for the lack of office interaction while others feel the need to check in on their subordinates. However, if you think back to before the pandemic, it’s likely that meetings were the default tool that your company used to communicate and exchange information. We just carried them over to remote work. We transposed traditional office activities to our home offices and often found that it does not necessarily transfer well. Remote work is here to stay, so now is a good time to revisit this practice.

Introducing a new paradigm

Fortunately for us, we can learn from companies like Basecamp that established remote working policies well before the global pandemic. In fact, many made a paradigm shift by treating remote work as asynchronous. This means recognizing that people do not work at the same time for many reasons. Their kids may have different day care and school schedules, or they live in separate time zones. They may work on another timetable, or have leisure activities earlier in the evening. Many parents experienced this reality during lockdowns while trying to juggle their kids home schooling with office hours. But if work schedules are not synchronised, how are we supposed to communicate effectively?

We should write more

Clear written communication is the key to asynchronous work. Good writing demands a more complex thought process than speaking and a better understanding of a subject to communicate it. This can take many forms like an email, a message in a collaboration app or a long form document. One major advantage of written work is that it is reusable. An email can be forwarded, a message in a Slack or Teams channel can be read by many, and detailed technical documentation can be made available to other teams. But the main benefit when it comes to remote work, is that people can consult the information when they choose to, regardless of their schedules. By placing more focus on detailed writing for communication, the need for meetings can be reduced.

Meeting tips

Managing meetings better can bring back a balance to our remote work lives. Here are a few things to consider before sending out that next invitation:

• Prepare a memo: Research the topic, seek opinions from others then write it up. Writing forces the author to gain a good understanding of a subject in order to create an easy to read narrative. The memo can be shared for feedback even before a meeting is needed. Amazon executives are required to write a six-page memo for meetings. Attendees spend time reading the memo at the start of a meeting, thus establishing the context for a good discussion.
• Evaluate meeting cost: Whether it’s in real life or virtual, a meeting takes up the time of all its participants. By inviting someone to a meeting, we are asking them to give up some of their productivity for our own priorities. A one-hour meeting with four people costs a company four hours of productivity or half a workday. Always consider the impact a meeting will have on other people’s productivity.
• Set a time limit: Decide on a time limit before the meeting starts and when that time is up, the meeting must stop regardless of where it’s at. This timebox, as it's known in Agile frameworks, forces people to prioritize issues to discuss.
• Only invite contributors: Virtual meetings make it easier to surf the web or look at your phone while listening in. Only invite people who will contribute to the discussion. Elon Musk of Tesla recommends that if a person feels they are not adding value, then they should leave a meeting. This seems rude, but this shocking rule is built into the company’s culture and is now expected of employees.
• Encourage meet afters:  It is not uncommon for people to move off topic during meetings. This results in exchanges between a few attendees while everyone else waits to get back to the agenda. Out of respect for other people’s productivity, encourage those concerned to continue their discussion after the meeting.

To recap

Meetings have become the default tool for communication in lots of companies. With many people now working remotely, meetings are everywhere as we try to keep up with office interactions. However, as you may have experienced, the home environment is not well suited to the office 9 to 5. Making the move to asynchronous work allows people to adapt their jobs to personal schedules and improve their productivity. Remember though, this does require a paradigm shift from companies and demands that workers practise clear written communication. Whether both parties are ready for this change is another challenge. But increasing our use of written form can help reduce the need for all those meetings.