Has anyone ever said, 'I wish I could go to more meetings today'? - Matt Mullenweg
Today's blog post will show you three ways to uncover the largest time and cost-saving opportunities for your team 👇
3 Tactics to Reduce Meeting Bloat
If you are in control of your team's meeting schedule you can apply these simple tactics:
In our scenario we will start with the following assumptions:
- Meeting Duration: 60 minutes
- Meeting Cadence: Weekly
- Meeting Participant Headcount: 10 people
Let's go into detail about what this means for each tactic in isolation.
#1: Reduce Duration
The first tactic is the most intuitive one.
If your weekly meeting is scheduled for 60 minutes, reduce it to 30 minutes.
Total savings: ∂(meeting_duration) * headcount
If you have a team of 10 people this would mean savings of 300 minutes (= 5 man-hours per week).
#2: Reduce Cadence
Secondly, you can adjust the meeting cadence from weekly to bi-weekly.
Total savings: ∂(reduced_meeting_duration) * headcount
If you have a weekly meeting of 60 minutes and change it to bi-weekly you would save 1200 minutes per month (= 20 man-hours per month).
#3 Reduce Participant Headcount
Lastly, you can have only meeting participants who actively contribute to the meeting (i.e. discussion or decision making needed/etc.). The rest of the team can be updated by a written summary of the meeting.
Total savings: ∂(headcount) * meeting duration
If you reduce your participants from 10 to 5 people you save 300 minutes (= 5 man-hours) every week.
Combining the Three Tactics
You can use our free Meeting Cost Calculator to calculate the savings for your team.
In this example, I started with the initial scenario and made the following adjustments:
- Meeting Duration: 60 minutes → 30 minutes
- Meeting Cadence: Weekly → Bi-weekly
- Meeting Participant Headcount: 10 people → 5 people
The result in cost savings (Time | Money) is quite significant:
- Before: 2.400 minutes | $3,392.71
- After: 300 minutes | $424.09
By making these small tweaks we reduced the meeting cost by 87.50% 🤯
These are significant cost and time savings for your team and your business.
Make use of them.
How to Think About Reducing Meetings
#1: Identify the Largest Time Sinks
- Talk to your team and identify which meetings are
too long→ shorten those - Talk to your team and identify which meetings are happening
too frequently→ reduce their cadence - Talk to your team and identify which meetings are
redundant→ cut those or reduce the participant list
#2: Substitute the Communication Flow
Regardless of meetings or no meetings you want your team to be "in the loop".
- What: Goals; Updates; etc.
- How: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs); Templates; Checklists; Prioritization
The problem with most meetings is that they are purely informational (i.e. someone shares an update; no discussion).
Instead: Share updates via written updates in team comms channel or documentation.
⚡️ Pro Tip: Use meetings for highly important communication:
- High Urgency (urgent): Problem resolution & fire fighting; etc.
- High Importance (strategic): Career planning; All-company updates; etc.
Want to Learn More About Remote?
Check our email-based course The 80/20 of Remote Team Leadership where we teach how to set up scalable documentation for your remote-first team 👇
If you have any additional questions you can:
- Get in touch with me via Twitter or LinkedIn
- Get access to our free Remote Workbook (Notion Template), which is a database of best practices for remote work
- Get access to our free Meeting Cost Calculator (Google Sheets Template) to reduce meeting bloat
- Get access to our free Documentation Masterclass (Swipe File) to be inspired
