Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
187. How To Stop Meetings From Running Your Day
We call out why meetings feel endless and show practical ways to make them shorter, clearer and tied to outcomes. Startup chaos meets enterprise structure as we share tactics for agendas, cadence, and guarding your calendar without burning bridges.
• naming the meeting problem and calendar overload
• one‑on‑ones versus team syncs and scaling with layers
• startup reactivity versus enterprise planning horizons
• shifting from task lists to outcome‑based management
• demanding agendas and clear objectives for invites
• using 15‑ and 25‑minute blocks and off‑hour starts
• on‑demand time with pre‑reads and owner accountability
• blocking focus time and quarterly pruning of recurrings
• recognizing structural interdependencies that fuel meeting load
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Oh hey, what's going on? Oh hey, I was uh mid-thought, but uh yeah, just go ahead and throw Craig in. Why not? Let's start recording.
SPEAKER_02:I I've been doing a lot of preparation for this episode, which I know you have just a short amount of time to talk about. Uh I've I've been thinking about this topic forever, really. This is not a just a last minute climb on the wall grab bag of a thing for us to discuss. But given our given our short stint of time, I do see a kitty cat on your desk.
SPEAKER_03:I'm on a standing desk too. I don't know if she's about to do a suicide bomb on a oh oh there it is. Suicide bomb. Solid. She's gone.
SPEAKER_02:That cat just did a dive bomb to the floor. Sorry to distract you.
SPEAKER_01:You know what else? You know what else did a dive bomb to the floor? What? What should we do then? Corporate strategy, podcast that could have been an email. I'm bruised.
SPEAKER_02:And today we're talking about meetings. This meeting could have been an email. The podcast that could have been a meeting that could have been an email. We haven't talked about meetings in a long time. And uh I thought for m for months now I've said, hey, we need to do an episode where we revisit the topic of meetings. How do you run them? How do you make them good? How do you actually get value out of them? Meetings suck, man. I don't know about you, but like in the world of I think in the world of remote work, one of the one of the few things that became worse was the meeting. Because I feel like you can just call them whenever you want. Uh you're you're kind of held hostage by them, especially if you're in like a cameras on environment. Um it's just it's just the worst. I hate meetings. How about you?
SPEAKER_03:They're they're the freaking worst, dude. Like the the absolute worst. I've been thinking about how lately I've just been trapped in these ongoing meetings. Like, oh yeah, we'll scale we'll schedule a series around it. Like, yeah, we'll schedule a series. And then you know it's seven years later and you still have that series on your calendar. Like, what am I doing still in this? Yeah, yeah, it's it is actually the worst.
SPEAKER_02:And I I don't I don't know. I am at the point I'm at the point of uh no return. I if I if I could drop 75% of the meetings on my calendar, I would be a s just a different person. I'd be a happy, changed, wonderful person. So what can we do? Clark, what can we do as citizens of Corp to make the meetings suck less? Let me ask you this.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Hypothetical. Hypothetical. Follow me. Type me. What if you just said no and you didn't go to any of the meetings? Can't do it. Can't do it. Why can't you do it? Let's dig into that. I'm part of the problem. I'm running half of the meetings. I'm running. Oh, half? Okay, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. What percentage of meetings do you actually schedule? Half? Let me take a look. I have my calendar right here.
SPEAKER_02:We're gonna do an analysis. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven, eight, nine.
SPEAKER_00:Ten. Eleven twelve.
SPEAKER_01:I'm running twelve of fourteen meetings. You are the problem. You are the this is you. You're the problem.
SPEAKER_03:But I have to run them. Otherwise, no one else will. I'm looking through my calendar right now. I don't know which is worse, actually. I have one, two, three, four.
SPEAKER_00:Four meetings that I've scheduled this week.
SPEAKER_03:And the rest is from everyone else.
SPEAKER_02:I should mention this week's a three-day for me. So that's even worse. In three days.
SPEAKER_01:That is so much worse.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's those poor people around you. Okay, well, we can dig into this.
SPEAKER_02:Poor me, man. I'm the one doing the work. I'm the one who's like keeping the wings on the plane.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, this is this is important. Let's get into why. I want to hear your perspective. Why do you need to schedule those meetings rather than sending an email, doing a sprint plan, whatever? And I will also explain why, because I think there's two separate problems. You're scheduling meetings for a reason, and you have to schedule a lot of them. I have to attend a lot of meetings, and I don't really have a choice either. So my calendar is, and I think just for the folks out there, we both have just jam pack calendars. I mean, some days for me are 30-minute back-to-back for like 10 hours straight. Like that happens.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You've got to let 30 where I wasn't busy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. And it is so draining from a mental capacity standpoint to say, all right, 30 minutes this topic, 30 minutes this topic, 30 minutes chatting with this person about a range of topics, 30 minutes to this. And like your brain at the end of those days, you're like, I don't know what's up, I don't know what's down, I don't know what's all around, but my brain ain't here anymore. And that's how you feel at the end of these days. It's crazy. It's crazy to live like this. And I don't think we're the only ones. I think everyone else is being on the stage.
SPEAKER_02:So, so to your question, uh, I would say about 50% of the meetings this week are one-on-ones. So, conversations between either me and my team or me and other folks that need either my mentorship or my direct work on things to help them do their jobs. So 50% is just me being a good human being that cares about other human beings. Still exhausting. It's very exhausting. There's a lot to keep track of. The other 50% of the meetings are either team thinks where everyone's kind of like sharing what they're doing, if they need help, what they need, you kind of stand up. Or it is discussions about a project. Because and and you know, I I jest, we all jest this meeting could have been an email, but I think the the real problem is there's just the the question that that rings true for me every day is do I want to type out an eight-page email that no one's gonna read, or do I want to hold these people hostage and have a conversation? So which is it, right? Because it's gonna need to get done, and I'm not gonna do it. So someone's gotta do it, and I have to orate to them what the thing is so they can do it, or work with someone to do it. Ergo vis-a-vis concordedly, I got a lot of meetings on my calendar.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It's really yeah, it's a difficult predicament. And like I I think when your team gets to a certain size, you have to start building structure to the team. Like, this is something I mean, my team's 16 people now. Like, there's no way I could have weekly one-on-ones with the team, and also I need to develop some sort of like growth pattern for them. It's like there's a senior, more senior level of my team, and there's three of them that manage everyone else. And so the only people I meet with weekly are those three core more senior management people on my team. And those are the people that like I always am talking with. They're my top three because there's no way I could do 15. And then they help you know direct the team beyond. But I do sync up with everybody on my team. Like I have monthly with a few, but quarterly with some of just like, hey, we're like three levels removed. I'm never quarterly with you because I still want to connect with you. I want us to have a relationship, but we don't need to be syncing because we would just not have anything to talk about. So I don't know if that is one thought. I don't your your team's grown quite a bit too, but not a it's not a possibility.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely out of the question. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I meet with non-team members every week. Uh it's it's out of the question because I am such a crucial piece of the marketing department that they need to talk with me. I need to talk with them. There is like work will not get done if we don't meet and speak, which is you know, just it is what it is.
SPEAKER_03:Startup loves. Let me ask you this, because I do this to people who are not my direct team. I still care about them as people, but I don't necessarily see a lot of value in us meeting on work-related topics. And so they schedule a meeting with me and I say, make it 15 minutes. Let's do 15. We'll do 15, we'll catch up because we have nothing super critical to talk about, but I know we just need to maintain a relationship. Is it rude or is it okay?
SPEAKER_02:I think it's rude. Yeah. I mentor a lot of these people. Like some of these people I mentor. So like it's not just a I'm helping them with their work, it's like there's a mentorship angle there too. Yeah, it's tough, man. Like, I look at my calendar and I don't see anything that I could actively cancel. Now, there are things that I wish folks would be able to take on and do on their own, but that comes with more mentorship, right? So it's yeah, you know, it's a catch 22, which requires more meetings. So it's tough.
SPEAKER_03:Tough it is, it's hard. Yeah. A couple of tricks that I use is yeah, if you've got a team, you need to extract it a bit and create a management layer in which your team gets probably past 10, because you just can't have even 10, 30-minute one-on-ones a week is that's five hours. That's a lot of time. It is a lot of time, but you do have to have you know some sort of ongoing cadence with your partners because at a big corporation, even a startup, if you're not constantly holding that relationship, meeting with your level partners, and also your more senior leaders too, of like your management chain, all those things add up, and it's many, many hours a week. And to your point, it is really hard to skip those. But if you can shorten it to 15 minutes, I do it. Some people probably think it's rude. But I'm like, hey, we don't have any work relation ties. I know we want to meet and talk about things, but I'm sorry, I've got 15 minutes for you.
SPEAKER_01:Dude, that's like hard.
SPEAKER_03:I know it's so mean, but it's like it's the reality, right? It's like I've got all these projects, I can't squeeze another 30-minute meeting, even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it. My brain will be more dead. So it's rude, but you can at least say, hey, I'm still making time for you. I just can't give you a full 30 this week. So if you want to catch up, I'll give you 15. I can't do it. I can't do that. I know it's it's a time.
SPEAKER_01:Give me another tip. Give me another tip.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I I almost want to look at like, I've got the reverse problem. I put it on rather than me scheduling, I put the responsibility on other people if they need me for something. Yeah. And like that's hard too, right? Because it's like, hey, I am not going to schedule a standing meeting because I am not the one who is bringing things to you for guidance or for help. And I'm not going to hold you accountable to those. Well, I am going to hold them accountable to these things. But I'm like, you schedule time for me or with me on my calendar and you bring the agenda. Like, this is your time. You tell me what you need help with. Come to me with an agenda. Please send it ahead of time. Then I can review it and be prepared to help you as efficiently as we can. So like I put all the effort on others if they need me as a critical piece to something. Now, the meetings I do have to schedule, I think, are very similar to the ones you have to. It's like there's something critical that only I can do, and I've got to guide a group of people to go get the thing done. And so, like, those are my four lengthy-ish 90 to 120 minute meetings that I scheduled this week is like focus topics so I can drive a product or a project or whatever it is forward.
SPEAKER_02:If I told someone to bring an agenda to the meeting, they would look at me like I had just landed from a different planet. They'd be like, Bruz? I I don't know how to do that. What that's a problem. There's gotta be an agenda in meetings. No. Well, I mean, there's a loose agenda, but like expecting them to run the meeting, you're out of your mind. You're out of your mind.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know if it's just an enterprise versus startup thing, but I do expect an agenda. Like, there's so much that if I get a random meeting that just has a subject line, I'm declining and responding back. Please send an agenda so I understand the objective of this meeting. What fortunate, lucky planet do you live on? I would get an enterprise, an enterprise very large company where we have teams of teams of teams. Blend in and hide in the masses. You definitely can. Yeah, but I don't know any of that. For me, it's it's the it's the core part of kicking off a meeting. It's like, what is the objective of the meeting? And then what's the agenda? What are we trying to get on the other side of this? And if I I don't attend meetings unless I understand that. Because what's the point? Like I have to understand why I'm there, why you need me, and if it needs to be a priority, if it doesn't, I'm not coming.
SPEAKER_02:So, you know, it's funny. Um, if I had to quantify looking at my calendar, every meeting that I go to, they're all important. None I can't skip any of them. We don't have meetings to meet. Uh, if we did, that would be a conversation to be had. But that we just don't have that luxury, right? Like everything is a priority, everything's important. Everything requires someone's domain expertise, probably me. And that's why I'm there. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, it is tough. It is really hard in a startup because you're kind of flying by, like, every day can be different. In my case, something could happen tomorrow in the market or your company where you're like, we've got to react, we gotta move. I think in a larger corporation, we have the benefit of long-term planning. And so, like, right now, we're planning out the next three years of stuff, right? So, like, we know what the priorities are, we generally know what we're working on. Now, how exactly the details, the tactical planning of that could be totally different as we kind of get into the actual work itself, but generally we know the priority of things. So, I can easily look at my calendar and be like, hey, this thing's not a priority for me, and we put it three years from now. So, I'm not talking about it this year. And people don't love that answer, but it's the truth. It's like, I don't know what to tell you. It's not a priority for organization at the moment, and I know you care about it, but sorry, got to focus on the priorities. How do they respond when you say that? Usually, I mean, some people don't love it, obviously. They're like, What do you mean it's not a priority? I'm like, listen, we got these priorities, it's time, scope, resources. Like, if we don't get these things done, we can't support. I've mentioned this in previous podcasts, but for everyone who's new here, my job is not the software business or the hardware business. We support a larger kind of entertainment and hospitality brand. So for us, it's like, hey, yeah, that let's say, yeah, hospitamment, some people might say. But it could be like a hotel, it could be, you know, a new film or something like that. And I'm just throwing arbitrary examples of the generic industry that I'm in. But it could be like, hey, that thing's coming out, it's got a deadline. And your thing does not beat that. And it's a really easy conversation. They're like, yeah, you're right. We're opening a hotel, my thing that I care about isn't that important in the grand reality of things. So usually people then have to go figure out how do I get creative to solve the thing I want to do, or should I be doing this at all? They don't love it though. It's not a fun conversation, but it's the truth.
SPEAKER_02:I am just immensely jealous of the power that you wield. And maybe it's maybe it's also that I'm just immensely burnt out on startup lifestyle. I I just can't imagine like one, having something, having a priority three years out, what a what a dream, what a vision. Try I can't get priorities like six months out. Uh we're we're living by the seat of our pants, which are on fire, right? And then you know, that is startup. We have the ability to be nimble, we have the ability to be agile, so everything is reactive. Very few things are prioritized to that level. Very few things. I tried to actually make a a calendar this year of all the content uh that we would be working on and planning and doing thought leadership around. And I looked at it a week ago and was like, well, dang, we didn't even do 50% of this. It's just how much changed with planning. So don't have that luxury. And you know, because of that, meetings when they when they do happen, they're important because it's it is whatever the newest priority is. That's what we're meeting on, that's what we're talking about, that's what we're focusing on. It's what's the projects for this quarter. We don't ever talk about anything that is more than a quarter out. Never. I've never had a meeting about anything longer than a quarter out ever in my life at this company.
SPEAKER_03:I imagine, and maybe this is one of like it's funny because the outcome is the same. We both still have tons of meetings. We both look back at our roadmaps and a lot of it changes of like this is the plan. We deviated a lot from this plan. Like both of us, the outcomes are the same there, regardless of the size of our corporation. And I think it just comes down to you know, meetings are necessary to keep that one-on-one connection, especially as you're a manager with your team, to grow people to help work through the maybe nuance of a project or blockers that come up, or just kind of going all hands on deck to get the job done. Like I'd say, even though it's very different while we're having those meetings and what you have on your calendar versus what I have on my calendar, I think the the actual minutia of the meeting itself is around the core same problems or things that we need to do, which is really interesting, actually. And the outcome's the same. Like we both end up with the same results.
SPEAKER_02:So yes, but how do I solve my problem? Which is I hate meetings and I'm stuck in them all day.
SPEAKER_03:To be honest with you, I feel like in a startup, there's no such thing as an uninterrupted individual contributor. So true. It's like I even think of like software engineering as a startup. It's like product product management comes in, your favorite Bruce, and they're like, hey, we gotta change direction, we've got to work on another feature. That might happen like multiple times every sprint, and you know it's happening. And so at a startup, I just think you're accepting a higher level of collaboration and visibility because the team's so small.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, you might be right. This just might be a monster of startups making, and I've I've grown weary of it. But uh dang, I wish I wish you had a solve. I wish there was a salve that I could rub on my eyes to make this a little bit more palatable.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I think, you know, two thoughts. In big corporations, there's a way to get out of meeting hell. And it's to remain an individual contributor. Yes. And say, don't do a lot well. Do a little well. I know that sounds terrible, but it's true. It's like I know you could be so good at one like thing like dot net or firmware programming, and like don't take on a bunch of projects. Just take on like one or two and be like, sorry, I can't take on anymore. And like the reality of your life is you will know what you're doing a year out from now, and you will have no meanings to ever talk about it because you're probably the only person who does it. You'll just kind of get forgotten about. I love that.
SPEAKER_02:I think uh I I wish I had that ability, but unfortunately, cat's out of the bag for me. The the the one thing that I've tried to do in the past is like actively block my calendar to stop meetings from taking the space. But all that does is it just pushes them out to inconvenient times for me. So it's like, oh, I hope you like meetings at eight or six or back to back. So now what it's what's funny is they'll never actually like request a block time that I've just blocked to work on things, they'll double book another important meeting so I have a conversation of which one would you like me to go to? I just I cannot figure out a way to remedy this problem. But uh it's it sounds like the problem isn't the meetings. That's that is a symptom of a much greater sickness.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's true for both of us, actually. Yeah like a greater organizational sickness that could be skill set, it could be people, it could be organizational, you know, that the way the organization was structured forces you to have more meetings than you probably need, unfortunately. Like you create interdependencies between teams, you create all these loops where you can't have autonomy and flow in a single team, you have to rely on seven different teams to get anything done. Like the symptoms are a plenty, but I think, like you said, I think there are tactics that you can use to make it better. Like I think you just mentioned one. It's if you are suffering from meeting hell, get better at planning. Plan your week ahead of time. Block your calendar so you actually get a lunch and can breathe. Like get some time on your calendar so that you have some some me time and you don't get burnt out like poor poor Brucey. Burnt out Brucie over here is struggling with.
SPEAKER_02:You know what else you can do. What else? Hit me. You can schedule meetings on the quarter, not the hour or half hour, which everyone does. So from 2.15 to 2.45, that's when we're doing our meeting. What that does is it really just Fs up everyone who schedules on the hour and half hour, which 99% of people do. So you at least get like 30 minutes, 15 and 15, which isn't much, but you know, it's good if you need to take a dump.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I actually first of all, I love that you went right into that. That is a great tactic, is like end the meeting a little early or start it off kilter just to be like, hey, I knew we need a 10-minute break, and staggering. Nobody, nobody can easily schedule a 10-minute meeting. So it will take them some effort to figure this out if they if they're gonna try.
SPEAKER_02:You are gonna ruin people's days if you do this, though. Uh, I do do this in emergencies when I'm like, I just can't. I'm gonna schedule like from 215 to 245, but you're gonna piss people off just to promise, because they're gonna look at your calendar because you're important, they're gonna want to schedule you and think about how do I schedule Bruce? He's got these weird blocks, I can't I can't fit him in with the rest of the organization. Now you're double booked.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I I like that tip though. I think it's a good tip. I'd also say two more tips for me because I know we're we're cutting it short on time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I think if you're the one scheduling a meeting, make sure the objective is clear and give an agenda for people to understand so you know what you're you're gonna get out and start your meeting that way. Hey, the objective of this meeting is to get XYZ by this date or to make a plan or whatever, like be very clear that by the end of the meeting, what does success look like? And that kind of leads me to my second point of I think we need to get out of telling people exactly what to do and tell them what the outcome looks like. I think that's a lot of what I see a lot of managers get stuck in, traps on, even my own managers on my team that are managing the rest of my team. I'm like, don't go in and just tell your team exactly what to do. Don't say, hey, I need you to go write this PRD and have it to me by Wednesday. It's no, hey, I need you to go gather the necessary requirements and show me how it's going to meet the business value we're trying to achieve. And it's more success-based rather than task-based. And what that does is it puts rather than okay, you come back to me, Bruce, with a PRD by the end of the week. I'm like, okay, great. Now let's read through it together. Wait, it doesn't hit this objective, this objective, this objective. I'm like, I don't understand how we realize value with the requirements you put together. Like, what is the end goal? And so, like, then we have to go into, okay, well, yeah, what is the end goal? It's like, if you start with that and say, hey, here's what success looks like, here's your constraints. You've got this much time, you've got this much money, you have this many people. That's your constraint. Success is achieving objective X, Y, or Z. Show me a plan on how you're gonna do that. And when you get into meetings, have them tell you about how they're working towards that plan, not the tactical minutiae of like, I wrote three user stories today, I think it's really gonna help keep the team moving. It's like, no, that doesn't matter. Are you tracking towards your goal of your objectives or whatever that is? So I think that's that's my biggest tip for managers out there. So, what does success look like? What are your constraints? And have them tell you the plan on how they're looking to get there rather than you telling them how to do it. I love it.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's actually a really good way to break down and drive outcomes. And it's also a good way to evaluate and see if your team is capable of doing the jobs that they've been hired for. Um, really, really good point. You know, it's it's very ironic that is the point when we literally just came up with this topic for a podcast 30 seconds before starting it. So I appreciate you offering that advice in these trying times of podcast creation. And on that note, we are out of time. So if you want to get involved with all things corporate strategy, make sure to click your show notes, take a look at that link tree. You can join our Discord, you can buy a baby onesie from our spreadshop, you can give us money because we pay to put this show out there and you can support us and we'd love you for it. Uh, you can also share this pod with your friends, family, neighbors, and everyone you know, uh, coworkers. If corporate strategy makes a great Christmas gift, just give them a link. And uh hey, happy Christmas. Here's a link to a podcast. It's the best gift. It skips it keeps on giving because you're gonna get free, fresh content year-round from your favorite two creators, Bruce and Clark. Everyone loves them, they're so good. Get it. Uh thanks for your listenership. Join the Discord, get in the conversation. We gotta run. As per usual, today this podcast could have been in an email, but we didn't. I'm Bruce.
SPEAKER_03:Merrickrima.
SPEAKER_02:Merrickrima, you're you're you're on mute. See you next week. Merrickrima.
