This week, Shopify announced that they are eliminating most of their internal meetings to boost productivity and eliminate wasted time. Personally, I love this move for Shopify and hope other large companies will continue to set a positive example amidst the slew of changing trends in how we work.
I've implemented "No Meeting Thursdays" on engineering teams in two rapidly scaling technology companies. In both cases, as the companies scaled, it was clear that our culture was becoming too meeting-heavy. Multiple teams, managers, and roadmaps meant lots of time hashing things out face to face. Some folks (often our more senior resources) were needed to weigh in on other teams' meetings, and soon their calendars (and souls) were decimated by meetings every week.
As a quick stop-gap to ensure plenty of heads down time each week, we decided that Thursdays would be off limits for meetings with anyone in engineering. While there was some pushback from other departments initially, the engineering team was thrilled to have the time back, and the results were clear within a couple of weeks. Having to be more thoughtful about "who and when" forced us to be more efficient in meetings, which ultimately led to more creative and empowered engineering teams.
In addition, stirring the pot with a "no meetings" day sparked questions about the need for certain meetings at all. In one conversation, we found that the product team would need to move a bi-weekly ceremony involving engineers to a different day. After we dug into alternatives for the meeting schedule, it became apparent that we could actually scrap the separate meeting completely and cover the topics in an existing meeting.
While difficult to follow 100% in practice, scheduling meetings on Thursdays has become taboo. There better be a damn good reason to put a meeting on the calendar on a Thursday. Instead, we write more and collaborate via Slack and email(!) - having time to digest information asynchronously creates better context and ensures that everyone is on the same page.
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Hoping to implement a no-meeting day in your company, but not sure where to start? Here are a few tips to help you get started!
I've implemented "No Meeting Thursdays" on engineering teams in two rapidly scaling technology companies. In both cases, as the companies scaled, it was clear that our culture was becoming too meeting-heavy. Multiple teams, managers, and roadmaps meant lots of time hashing things out face to face. Some folks (often our more senior resources) were needed to weigh in on other teams' meetings, and soon their calendars (and souls) were decimated by meetings every week.
As a quick stop-gap to ensure plenty of heads down time each week, we decided that Thursdays would be off limits for meetings with anyone in engineering. While there was some pushback from other departments initially, the engineering team was thrilled to have the time back, and the results were clear within a couple of weeks. Having to be more thoughtful about "who and when" forced us to be more efficient in meetings, which ultimately led to more creative and empowered engineering teams.
In addition, stirring the pot with a "no meetings" day sparked questions about the need for certain meetings at all. In one conversation, we found that the product team would need to move a bi-weekly ceremony involving engineers to a different day. After we dug into alternatives for the meeting schedule, it became apparent that we could actually scrap the separate meeting completely and cover the topics in an existing meeting.
While difficult to follow 100% in practice, scheduling meetings on Thursdays has become taboo. There better be a damn good reason to put a meeting on the calendar on a Thursday. Instead, we write more and collaborate via Slack and email(!) - having time to digest information asynchronously creates better context and ensures that everyone is on the same page.
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Hoping to implement a no-meeting day in your company, but not sure where to start? Here are a few tips to help you get started!
- Approach the discussion with an open mind, and treat it as a thought experiment. Be open to feedback and suggestions.
- Discuss the obvious benefits of having a no meetings day once a week - The practice is beneficial for team health and creativity, reduces burnout, and it fortifies shelter for your team to get shit done.
- Offer alternative ways of "async" communication and collaboration - that daily standup can be in a Slack thread once a week! You're already likely paying a lot of money for tools that you could be using more.
- Present a clear plan for how a no meetings day would work, including who would be responsible for what and how decisions would be made. Offer alternate days/times for existing standing meetings (or a case for why they can be combined/eliminated).