Dear exec who's worried about efficiency: Instead of pushing AI and RTO for the 3rd or 5th time, maybe look at your team's calendars. 32% of office workers spent more than half their week in meetings, and less than half of those meetings are effective. We're in the third "year of efficiency," pushing people to do more with less and crank up the output—but still not willing to put the energy into making meetings better. Flex Index partnered up with Dropbox to dig into the latest on why meetings don't work, and what we can do about it. Allison Vendt and team brought together a great group of experts: Molly Sands, PhD (Atlassian), Neil Morelli, PhD and Jonathan Flower (Workplace Labs), Caribay Garcia Marquez, PhD (Microsoft), Jeanette Mellinger (Question) and Patrick Lightbody (Reclaim.ai) Instead of focusing on eliminating meetings, we focused on making them better. Here's a few examples of what you'll find in the writeup. 1️⃣ The rule of one: The top reason people attend inefficient meetings is to rep their team or function. The issue? 2-4 people get invited from same function. 2️⃣ Simple frameworks: The word "meeting" covers debates, decisions, and development—as well as a host of other activities that might be an email. Build a taxonomy that you use for every invite: give clear expectations, reduce clutter, and force some thinking ahead of the calendar send. 3️⃣ AI can help: Only 20% of respondents use AI to summarize meeting notes and action items. Want to reduce attendance? You have to share out what got decided, why and what's next. 👉 Read on: https://lnkd.in/dZNTPVXT #meetings #productivity #AI
Do you know WHY they spend so much time in meetings, Brian? Anxiety and drama. “I have to be included!” FOMO, control, uncertainty, etc.. The wrong mindsets run too many projects in the age of AI.
Brian Elliott this is spot on. We haven't solved things that have plagued us for decades and that could save so much time and frustration if addressed.(To meetings I'd add things like effective work coordination + content management/governance.)
Agree on all points but one, where my call is: First weed out the worst meetings, then improve what remains. Step 1: Define Purpose and desired Outcome Step 2: Do we really need a meeting to do that? Step 3: If yes - prepare properly and invite as few as possible Meetings have been a burden for decades but blew up monstrously with covid when remote meetings broke down the physical barrier of the number of available meeting rooms. Online, there’s always a meeting room available….unfortunately. Great research and conclusions, Brian Elliott and Dropbox
I want to ❤️ this post twice.
Allison and Brian this is helpful reinforcement of intentional norming for effective meetings. One interesting roadblock we run into on your last point is a hesitancy on the part of organizations to use AI to summarize meetings due to security and legal concerns. Curious how you've dealt with this.