February 11, 2026 • 24 mins
Dr. Rebecca Hinds, author of Your Best Meeting Ever, shares how to waste less time and get things done -- together
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Rebecca Hines to Before Breakfast.
Rebecca is the author of the new book Your Best
Meeting Ever, Seven Principles for designing meetings that Get Things Done. So, Rebecca,
(00:36):
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Laura, I'm excited you could be here, and meetings is
a good topic. You know.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Why did you tell our listeners a little bit about
yourself first?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Sure? So, I've always been fascinated by organizational design and
how do you create organizations that are good for business
and good for people and collaboration in particular as an
area I've long been fascinated by ever since I did
my bachelor as I went to Stanford and fell in
love with, you know, organizational behavior design there. I then
(01:07):
did my masters in the same program and subsequently my PhD.
Currently I lead the work AI Institute at Glean, which
is our internal think tank, and previously I led the
work Innovation Lab at Asana, which was an internal research center,
and have long been fascinated as well about translating academic
(01:27):
type rigorous research into practical strategies and frameworks for executives
and leaders and workers in general.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, well, meetings is an area that is definitely ripe
for improvement, as I know, you know and here all
the time, like what do mores organizations get wrong with meetings?
Because it seems like, you know, we have to meet
on occasion, and yet many people are very very unhappy
with the way those things go.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Fundamentally, you know, we've accepted meetings, and in particular bad
or dysfunctional meetings, as an inevitable cost of doing business.
And at the root of so much of the problem
is the fact that we use meetings as a lazy, default,
knee jerk reaction for communication that doesn't deserve to be
(02:17):
a meeting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
When we think.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
About a meeting, it's you know, in the premise of
my book your best meeting ever is a meeting is
a product, right, It's the most important product that you
make as an organization. It's where decisions get made, priorities
get set, culture gets built, and yet it's also the
least optimized. And considering how much time, how much effort,
how much money we pour into meetings, the fact that
(02:40):
we don't take the time to intentionally design them is
both fascinating and deeply frustrating.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, because, I mean, first, there's the problem of volume.
I mean, I think you have some interesting numbers about
the sheer volume, both overall volume and then the proportion
of that that people feel as a waste of time.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's massive, and we've seen in particular over the last
two decades. Ever since the turn of the century, we've
seen collaboration in general in our organizations increase. We've seen
the time we spend in meetings increase, and I think
what's especially fascinating is through the pandemic, and in particular
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four, we saw the
(03:22):
time we spend in dysfunctional meetings increase significantly across all
levels of the organization. And you know, in theory it
should have decreased because we had all these new digital
tools that should have allowed us to spend less time
in meetings and certainly less time in dysfunctional meetings.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But what we didn't have.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Is a system lens. Employees often didn't have clarity in
terms of where to do the work, and we know
when there's a lack of clarity again, we default back
to meetings because they are the most reliable way to
transmit information, although the most expensive one as well.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, well, that's one of the things driving the volume
is that it's bad community, right, That's one of your
main points, is that what goes wrong with communication that
people are like, no, I need to have a meeting.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Often meetings are used for information exchange, you know, and
we see that in status updates, we see that in
broadcast briefings, even within specific meetings, you know. Often so
much of the communication is information exchange that we know
can not only be done more efficiently in asynchronous channels,
but also more effectively. And we need to get out
(04:30):
of this habit of using meetings for those information exchange.
If they are this very expensive product, which they are,
you know, we should be using them very strategically. It
should only be used, you know, if we're making a decision,
if we're discussing something that's complex, if we're deciding something.
You know, if we're developing ourselves or our team, all
(04:52):
of these things require often synchronous, real time back and
forth collaboration in a way that information.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Exchanged is not yeah, so it's something.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It's like something needs to change in the world as
a result of this meeting taking place, and money do
not seem to actually clear that bar.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And it needs you know, meetings. There's a reason why
your best meeting ever is a positive promise and not.
You know, meetings suck because I truly believe that, you know,
meetings are the highest leverage way that we can improve
our ability to lead and our organizational performance, and yet
you know often they're not used for that very strategic purpose.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, let's start with the volume and how one might
go about reducing the volume of meetings. Maybe first you
can talk sort of systematically, and then we'll look at
what individual people can do, like if you aren't in
charge to reduce your volume.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So often when we when we think about volume in particular,
and I compare it to technical debt, I call it
meeting debt. Just like in our our products, we often
have technical debt that builds up over time. Shortcuts fixes
with meetings. The same thing happens in the form of
often legacy meetings or meetings that are scheduled once that
drag on and become recurring meetings and don't ever get
(06:08):
taken off the calendar, and we don't think intentionally about
is our calendar serving us right now? And so often
I'll work with organizations where the meeting debt is so bad,
you know, the meetings are so dysfunctional, and you know,
often these were meetings that once had a strong purpose
and were intentionally put on the calendar, but no longer
(06:30):
serve the work. And in those cases, often what I'll
recommend is a complete calendar reset. I call it a
meeting doomsday. It's a forty eight hour calendar cleanse, and
it's designed very intentionally. It's designed to put the ownership
into the hands of employees. Ideally it's done at a
system level, an organizational level, or team level, but it's
(06:52):
structured in a way that employees do the culling of
the meetings. They delete the meetings, and then tips and
t and strategies are given to them to decide which
meetings to bring back on the calendar. Every meeting needs
to earn its place, and that type of reset not
only clear as time and clear as calendars, but it
(07:14):
also because it is a fresh slate, it starts to
rewire our assumptions about what actually deserves to be a meeting.
And it also gives people explicit permission to decline meetings,
where we know that so much of that is psychological
in terms of we fear canceling meetings because meetings are
(07:36):
such a personal act. It's a social contract. When someone
schedules a meeting with you, you feel obliged to reciprocate
that invitation and doomsday. These calendar resets, if they're done intentionally,
they give employees permission to decline meetings, delete meetings in
a way that isn't taken personally by the organizer, because
(07:59):
it's it's an intentional, system wide or team wide effort.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
then i'll be back with Rebecca Hines talking about better meetings. Well,
I am back talking with Rebecca Hines about how to
have Your Best Meeting Ever, which is the title of
her new book. So, Rebecca, we've been talking about things
(08:24):
we can do systematically, and I know you've worked with
a couple of organizations that have done a meeting's doomsday,
a meeting armageddon, as it were, a forty eight hour
cleanse to get rid of all these meetings on the calendar.
Let's say I don't work for one of those places,
and they have not brought you in as a consultant.
I am just feeling like I have a lot of meetings.
Is there something I can do to start changing that
(08:44):
volume on my calendar?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Absolutely, we are all co designers of better meetings, and
this is highly dependent on your role within the organization,
whether you're primarily a meeting organizer or a meeting attendee,
and the level of psychological safety within the organization. But fundamentally,
we all need to have a good understanding of what
(09:07):
our priorities are at work, and realistically, our priorities at
work are what our calendar says they are, and so often,
you know, when I'm working with individuals or advising individuals,
the first step is look at your calendar, and that's
a reflection of your priorities. Bucket the time you spend
often the majority is in meetings or some form of collaboration.
(09:29):
You know, bucket into different categories and then take a
beat and look at, Okay, what are your priorities as
you wish they would be, and how does that match up?
Because often what we'll see is you're spending disproportionately high
time in meetings and less time on the really important work,
the skilled work, the strategic work, the customer relationships. And
(09:52):
seeing that mismatch is often a first step, and then
you know lots of other strategies in terms of how
do we protect time. I'm a big proponent of meeting
blocks on our calendars and protecting those and then thinking
very carefully about when we do organize a meeting. I
often look at four key dimensions, so the length, the cadence,
(10:13):
the attendees, and the agenda items. And for each of
those dimensions there are lots of strategies that we can
put in place, even as an attendee, but especially as
an organizer, in terms of redesigning the length, the cadence,
the attendees, and the agenda items to be more valuable
for the people in the room. Length is a classic
example where we know meetings suffer from Parkinson's law. Meeting
(10:36):
work expands to fill the time allotted. If you look
at your calendar and most of your meetings are thirty
minutes or sixty minutes. It's a sign that we've just
accepted the calendar default and not thought intentionally about could
that thirty minute meeting be a twenty five minute meeting,
Could it be a fifteen minute meeting. All of these
(10:57):
things add up in a way that can meaningfully prove
our ability to hit our personal goals, have better work
life balance, and boost our organizational performance as well.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So I mean with one of that you mentioned in
the book that maybe ten hours was the tipping point
I was going to give people if they're adding up
their calendar, they're looking at what time I'm spending in meetings.
It's sort of ten hours what you might be aiming
for that or less if you're not in a role
that is like purely meeting based.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's on average. So this is research that comes from
a fantastic organization that I've interacted with and worked with
over the year's work litics, and what they've essentially shown
is for the meetings they analyze, a whole host of
negative consequences tend to kick in once people exceed that
ten hour a week threshold. Now many many people, most
(11:50):
people are well above that threshold, and so I often
use it as a benchmark. You know, what would happen
if you did cut your meetings down to ten hours?
Would things fundamentally change in terms of your ability and
in particular hinder your ability to move work forward and
hit your objectives. And it's a useful conversation, It's a
(12:10):
useful benchmarket. It's never one size fits all, but I
think you know, having that ten hour a week threshold
and understanding that, you know, focus time, engagement tends to
dip once we get to that threshold, I think is
a is a useful thought exercise and for some people,
you know, very helpful in terms of a hard barrier.
And I've worked with many folks who will set that
(12:32):
hard barrier in terms of I'm not going to have
more than ten hours a week in meetings because I
recognize that my ability to perform in the meeting outside
the meeting is negatively impacted.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And how would you recommend like having that conversation with
a manager, Like let's say I add up the meetings
on my.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Calendar and I met like, I don't know, twenty five.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Thirty hours a week of meetings, and I would like
to be closer to the ten hour number. How do
you start that conversation with the people who are.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Managing your team or your organization.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It's always best to have objective data in terms of
what's working and what's not working. And that's why you
know these dedicated initiatives that I'll often you know, lead
or advise companies on where your level setting in terms
of what is an effective meeting? Right, an effective meeting,
your best meeting ever, is a meeting where the attendee
(13:22):
is not yourself as an organizer, leave knowing that the
time they've invested in that meeting has been well invested.
And so the more we can have data in terms
of Okay, I've asked attendees or I've rated these these
meetings and they're not effective, they're not serving me as
an individual or the team, the more you can then
(13:43):
give that information to the team member, the organizer, the
manager and have that conversation. In my experience, managers typically
respond very well to this. Certainly, there's some meetings where
we might not be getting as much value as we're
contributing to the meeting, and those in particular, we don't
want to be taking off the calendar too quickly, but
(14:05):
having that conversation. The big problem is many managers don't
have this conversation with employees in terms of it's okay
to walk out of a meeting where you're not contributing
value or reaping it, and it's likewise okay to have
a conversation with the organizer if the meeting isn't worth
your time. If you're coming from a place of intentionality,
(14:26):
people tend to.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Respect that, And you also suggest asking sort of leading
questions or curious sounding questions, like if we're discussing this topic.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Will we have time to get to this thing on
the agenda? Is that a good.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Strategy if you're operating in a psychologically unsafe environment. Yes,
because the more you can disarm the sense of threat
that would be perceived by you calling out a bad meeting,
the better your feedback or criticism disguised will be taking. Now,
(15:00):
if you're operating in a psychologically safe environment, you can
afford to be more blunt and assertive. We know that's
going to be more efficient and move things forward much
more effectively, and calling out specifically, you know, I don't
think this meeting is effective for this reason. You know
I'm coming from a place of wanting the meeting to
be better for everyone. Again, the level of psychological safety
(15:24):
really really matters in terms of the best most effective
approach that.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
You talk about putting in little moments of joy to
make people actually want to come to a meeting. What
can we do to make a meeting seem sort of fun,
I mean a little bit like a party.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I guess it's really important because if we're using meetings intentionally,
we should have fewer meetings, which means the meetings that
we have should be deeply human. Right, That's the purpose
of live synchronous interaction is those things that we need
our human empathy, our human body language trust to develop.
(15:58):
And we've gotten into, you know, a situation where people
have a visceral negative reaction to meetings. You ask people,
you know, do you like meetings? No one likes meetings.
You know you hear the grumbles right away. And so
I'm a big proponent of within all of our meetings,
as an organizer, you should be injecting at least one
moment of delight. It can be a five second moment,
(16:22):
it can be a two second moment, it can be
a minute moment. But delight is this very interesting combination
of joy and surprise. And I think the surprise element
is really important because it causes people to think differently
and remember that moment that they weren't expecting. So it
(16:43):
can be a shout out, you know, you've done a
good job on this. You know, the person wasn't expecting
that the shout out. It can be you're bringing a
food item that has a you know, cookies or cupcakes
that has you know, some personal significance to you, something
that will cause in employees and the people in the
room to have a lasting positive impression because that will
(17:06):
then make them want to show up the next time
engaged in the contributions and the content of the meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Just to say here, I mean, it's probably not asking
people for a fun fact, right, I mean, is there
a sort of another one that we could do for
making a moment of delight?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yes, I think And we also, you know, I've seen
this this you know, negatively impacted meeting as well. When
we start to ask about weekend activities also anything where
you might have differences in terms of people's you know,
work life balance. You want to make sure your level
setting in terms of So that's why I love shout outs.
(17:47):
I love kudos. You know, everyone goes around and you know,
celebrate someone else. You know, we don't want to be
doing this in every meeting, but we know that peer
to peer recognition is also very effective and intrinsically motivated,
motivating for so many people. So that type of thing
where your level setting, you're ensuring you're not you know,
(18:09):
you're including everyone and asking questions where everyone feels excited
to contribute in some way.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Rebecca Hines. Well,
I am back talking with Rebecca Hines, who is the
author of Your Best Meeting Ever. So switching gears a
little bit. Rebecca, I wonder if you can tell us
a little bit about how you work, Like what does
(18:37):
a day look like for you these days?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Sure? So I try to structure my meetings very intentionally.
So I try. You know, I mentioned the four d
CEO tests in the book. A meeting should only happen
if you know fundamentally the purpose is to decide, debate, discuss,
or develop, And I'm pretty you know, stringent in terms
of that. If If I don't think that's the case,
I'll ask for an agenda, or I'll ask, you know,
(19:01):
what is my role in the meeting. I'll often, you know,
watch meetings asynchronously at one point five or two speed.
When I know that I'm not contributing value in the
meeting or reaping value from that that live synchronous communication.
I try to bundle different types of tasks. I think,
you know, I'm in the phase of my career where
(19:22):
I know how I work best, and I know when
you know I'm most creative. I know when I need
those deep focus blocks. If I'm doing similar types of activities,
I bundle those. I don't have too many back to
back meetings. Non negotiable for me is having you know,
some portion of every day where I'm at the gym
(19:43):
and working out and being active. Those are those are
non negotiables in terms of how I how I structure
my time.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I'm curious, do you have a morning routine.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I do have a morning routine at Ebbs and Flows.
You know, I'm at the late stages of life launching
this book, and so for the past year it's it's involved,
you know, doing work on the book before you know,
I go into my day job, and often that's you know,
a very early morning for a couple hours, and then
I'll switch gears for the majority of the day and
(20:17):
often I'll I'll go back and you know, catch up
on bookwork at the end of the day. It ebbs
and flows throughout my career, but I have learned in
terms of, you know, that balance of physical activity, taking
time each day where I'm off the screen, even if
it's for half an hour, and sleep. I try to,
(20:37):
you know, be relatively consistent about in terms of I
recognize how important that is in me being able to
show up each day.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Absolutely, so I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
So I'm a huge New Year's resolution person, and I
use resid lightly because they're more like goals for me.
I grew up as an athlete and I've always loved
goal setting and that's been something that has given me
a lot of stability and clarity and motivation through you know,
every phase of my life and career. And so, you know,
(21:16):
I love those three or four days before the start
of the new year where I'm tinkering at my New
Year's resolutions, new Year's goals. I usually have, you know,
I usually have twelve or sixteen each year, recognizing that,
you know, if I hit ten, that'll be that'll be
a success, and have them be from different categories as well.
And I find, you know, that's already taken me from
(21:38):
good to great in terms of how I'm approaching this
year and the intentionality with which you know, I'm spending
my time in investing my time.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Can you share one of them?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Oh, I'm so superstitious. Okay, all right, I'll have to,
I'll share. So I always have, you know, there are
two or three that are more physical physical activity related.
They're always two or three that are more family relationship oriented.
There are always two or three that are more work related.
I'm still very active doing research and academic research, so
(22:11):
I build in a category for that. And then also
I do have you know, one or two each year
that are about that delight and joy and being happy
and doing things that will make myself happy and others
happy as well. I'm a big believer in generosity and giving,
and so those are the sorts of categories that I
think about each year.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Gotcha, what are you looking forward to Right now.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I'm looking forward to the book launch. It's been so
fun to work with organizations and help them fix their
meeting dysfunctions. You know, I've last week I was working
with both a very large oil and gas company and
a book publisher and a tech company and seeing the
similarities but also the unique nuances of each industry and
person has been so fun. And shifting from the writing
(22:59):
to you know, the real practical which I love to
do as well.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Excellent And where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So my book is is everywhere your favorite bookstore. My
website's Rebecca Heines dot com and I'm active on LinkedIn
as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback on
this or any other episode, you can always reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(23:39):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(24:00):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Rebecca Hines to Before Breakfast.
Rebecca is the author of the new book Your Best
Meeting Ever, Seven Principles for designing meetings that Get Things Done. So, Rebecca,
(00:36):
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Laura, I'm excited you could be here, and meetings is
a good topic. You know.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Why did you tell our listeners a little bit about
yourself first?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Sure? So, I've always been fascinated by organizational design and
how do you create organizations that are good for business
and good for people and collaboration in particular as an
area I've long been fascinated by ever since I did
my bachelor as I went to Stanford and fell in
love with, you know, organizational behavior design there. I then
(01:07):
did my masters in the same program and subsequently my PhD.
Currently I lead the work AI Institute at Glean, which
is our internal think tank, and previously I led the
work Innovation Lab at Asana, which was an internal research center,
and have long been fascinated as well about translating academic
(01:27):
type rigorous research into practical strategies and frameworks for executives
and leaders and workers in general.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, well, meetings is an area that is definitely ripe
for improvement, as I know, you know and here all
the time, like what do mores organizations get wrong with meetings?
Because it seems like, you know, we have to meet
on occasion, and yet many people are very very unhappy
with the way those things go.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Fundamentally, you know, we've accepted meetings, and in particular bad
or dysfunctional meetings, as an inevitable cost of doing business.
And at the root of so much of the problem
is the fact that we use meetings as a lazy, default,
knee jerk reaction for communication that doesn't deserve to be
(02:17):
a meeting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
When we think.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
About a meeting, it's you know, in the premise of
my book your best meeting ever is a meeting is
a product, right, It's the most important product that you
make as an organization. It's where decisions get made, priorities
get set, culture gets built, and yet it's also the
least optimized. And considering how much time, how much effort,
how much money we pour into meetings, the fact that
(02:40):
we don't take the time to intentionally design them is
both fascinating and deeply frustrating.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Yeah, because, I mean, first, there's the problem of volume.
I mean, I think you have some interesting numbers about
the sheer volume, both overall volume and then the proportion
of that that people feel as a waste of time.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's massive, and we've seen in particular over the last
two decades. Ever since the turn of the century, we've
seen collaboration in general in our organizations increase. We've seen
the time we spend in meetings increase, and I think
what's especially fascinating is through the pandemic, and in particular
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four, we saw the
(03:22):
time we spend in dysfunctional meetings increase significantly across all
levels of the organization. And you know, in theory it
should have decreased because we had all these new digital
tools that should have allowed us to spend less time
in meetings and certainly less time in dysfunctional meetings.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But what we didn't have.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Is a system lens. Employees often didn't have clarity in
terms of where to do the work, and we know
when there's a lack of clarity again, we default back
to meetings because they are the most reliable way to
transmit information, although the most expensive one as well.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, well, that's one of the things driving the volume
is that it's bad community, right, That's one of your
main points, is that what goes wrong with communication that
people are like, no, I need to have a meeting.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Often meetings are used for information exchange, you know, and
we see that in status updates, we see that in
broadcast briefings, even within specific meetings, you know. Often so
much of the communication is information exchange that we know
can not only be done more efficiently in asynchronous channels,
but also more effectively. And we need to get out
(04:30):
of this habit of using meetings for those information exchange.
If they are this very expensive product, which they are,
you know, we should be using them very strategically. It
should only be used, you know, if we're making a decision,
if we're discussing something that's complex, if we're deciding something.
You know, if we're developing ourselves or our team, all
(04:52):
of these things require often synchronous, real time back and
forth collaboration in a way that information.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Exchanged is not yeah, so it's something.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It's like something needs to change in the world as
a result of this meeting taking place, and money do
not seem to actually clear that bar.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And it needs you know, meetings. There's a reason why
your best meeting ever is a positive promise and not.
You know, meetings suck because I truly believe that, you know,
meetings are the highest leverage way that we can improve
our ability to lead and our organizational performance, and yet
you know often they're not used for that very strategic purpose.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, let's start with the volume and how one might
go about reducing the volume of meetings. Maybe first you
can talk sort of systematically, and then we'll look at
what individual people can do, like if you aren't in
charge to reduce your volume.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So often when we when we think about volume in particular,
and I compare it to technical debt, I call it
meeting debt. Just like in our our products, we often
have technical debt that builds up over time. Shortcuts fixes
with meetings. The same thing happens in the form of
often legacy meetings or meetings that are scheduled once that
drag on and become recurring meetings and don't ever get
(06:08):
taken off the calendar, and we don't think intentionally about
is our calendar serving us right now? And so often
I'll work with organizations where the meeting debt is so bad,
you know, the meetings are so dysfunctional, and you know,
often these were meetings that once had a strong purpose
and were intentionally put on the calendar, but no longer
(06:30):
serve the work. And in those cases, often what I'll
recommend is a complete calendar reset. I call it a
meeting doomsday. It's a forty eight hour calendar cleanse, and
it's designed very intentionally. It's designed to put the ownership
into the hands of employees. Ideally it's done at a
system level, an organizational level, or team level, but it's
(06:52):
structured in a way that employees do the culling of
the meetings. They delete the meetings, and then tips and
t and strategies are given to them to decide which
meetings to bring back on the calendar. Every meeting needs
to earn its place, and that type of reset not
only clear as time and clear as calendars, but it
(07:14):
also because it is a fresh slate, it starts to
rewire our assumptions about what actually deserves to be a meeting.
And it also gives people explicit permission to decline meetings,
where we know that so much of that is psychological
in terms of we fear canceling meetings because meetings are
(07:36):
such a personal act. It's a social contract. When someone
schedules a meeting with you, you feel obliged to reciprocate
that invitation and doomsday. These calendar resets, if they're done intentionally,
they give employees permission to decline meetings, delete meetings in
a way that isn't taken personally by the organizer, because
(07:59):
it's it's an intentional, system wide or team wide effort.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
then i'll be back with Rebecca Hines talking about better meetings. Well,
I am back talking with Rebecca Hines about how to
have Your Best Meeting Ever, which is the title of
her new book. So, Rebecca, we've been talking about things
(08:24):
we can do systematically, and I know you've worked with
a couple of organizations that have done a meeting's doomsday,
a meeting armageddon, as it were, a forty eight hour
cleanse to get rid of all these meetings on the calendar.
Let's say I don't work for one of those places,
and they have not brought you in as a consultant.
I am just feeling like I have a lot of meetings.
Is there something I can do to start changing that
(08:44):
volume on my calendar?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Absolutely, we are all co designers of better meetings, and
this is highly dependent on your role within the organization,
whether you're primarily a meeting organizer or a meeting attendee,
and the level of psychological safety within the organization. But fundamentally,
we all need to have a good understanding of what
(09:07):
our priorities are at work, and realistically, our priorities at
work are what our calendar says they are, and so often,
you know, when I'm working with individuals or advising individuals,
the first step is look at your calendar, and that's
a reflection of your priorities. Bucket the time you spend
often the majority is in meetings or some form of collaboration.
(09:29):
You know, bucket into different categories and then take a
beat and look at, Okay, what are your priorities as
you wish they would be, and how does that match up?
Because often what we'll see is you're spending disproportionately high
time in meetings and less time on the really important work,
the skilled work, the strategic work, the customer relationships. And
(09:52):
seeing that mismatch is often a first step, and then
you know lots of other strategies in terms of how
do we protect time. I'm a big proponent of meeting
blocks on our calendars and protecting those and then thinking
very carefully about when we do organize a meeting. I
often look at four key dimensions, so the length, the cadence,
(10:13):
the attendees, and the agenda items. And for each of
those dimensions there are lots of strategies that we can
put in place, even as an attendee, but especially as
an organizer, in terms of redesigning the length, the cadence,
the attendees, and the agenda items to be more valuable
for the people in the room. Length is a classic
example where we know meetings suffer from Parkinson's law. Meeting
(10:36):
work expands to fill the time allotted. If you look
at your calendar and most of your meetings are thirty
minutes or sixty minutes. It's a sign that we've just
accepted the calendar default and not thought intentionally about could
that thirty minute meeting be a twenty five minute meeting,
Could it be a fifteen minute meeting. All of these
(10:57):
things add up in a way that can meaningfully prove
our ability to hit our personal goals, have better work
life balance, and boost our organizational performance as well.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So I mean with one of that you mentioned in
the book that maybe ten hours was the tipping point
I was going to give people if they're adding up
their calendar, they're looking at what time I'm spending in meetings.
It's sort of ten hours what you might be aiming
for that or less if you're not in a role
that is like purely meeting based.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's on average. So this is research that comes from
a fantastic organization that I've interacted with and worked with
over the year's work litics, and what they've essentially shown
is for the meetings they analyze, a whole host of
negative consequences tend to kick in once people exceed that
ten hour a week threshold. Now many many people, most
(11:50):
people are well above that threshold, and so I often
use it as a benchmark. You know, what would happen
if you did cut your meetings down to ten hours?
Would things fundamentally change in terms of your ability and
in particular hinder your ability to move work forward and
hit your objectives. And it's a useful conversation, It's a
(12:10):
useful benchmarket. It's never one size fits all, but I
think you know, having that ten hour a week threshold
and understanding that, you know, focus time, engagement tends to
dip once we get to that threshold, I think is
a is a useful thought exercise and for some people,
you know, very helpful in terms of a hard barrier.
And I've worked with many folks who will set that
(12:32):
hard barrier in terms of I'm not going to have
more than ten hours a week in meetings because I
recognize that my ability to perform in the meeting outside
the meeting is negatively impacted.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And how would you recommend like having that conversation with
a manager, Like let's say I add up the meetings
on my.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Calendar and I met like, I don't know, twenty five.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Thirty hours a week of meetings, and I would like
to be closer to the ten hour number. How do
you start that conversation with the people who are.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Managing your team or your organization.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It's always best to have objective data in terms of
what's working and what's not working. And that's why you
know these dedicated initiatives that I'll often you know, lead
or advise companies on where your level setting in terms
of what is an effective meeting? Right, an effective meeting,
your best meeting ever, is a meeting where the attendee
(13:22):
is not yourself as an organizer, leave knowing that the
time they've invested in that meeting has been well invested.
And so the more we can have data in terms
of Okay, I've asked attendees or I've rated these these
meetings and they're not effective, they're not serving me as
an individual or the team, the more you can then
(13:43):
give that information to the team member, the organizer, the
manager and have that conversation. In my experience, managers typically
respond very well to this. Certainly, there's some meetings where
we might not be getting as much value as we're
contributing to the meeting, and those in particular, we don't
want to be taking off the calendar too quickly, but
(14:05):
having that conversation. The big problem is many managers don't
have this conversation with employees in terms of it's okay
to walk out of a meeting where you're not contributing
value or reaping it, and it's likewise okay to have
a conversation with the organizer if the meeting isn't worth
your time. If you're coming from a place of intentionality,
(14:26):
people tend to.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Respect that, And you also suggest asking sort of leading
questions or curious sounding questions, like if we're discussing this topic.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Will we have time to get to this thing on
the agenda? Is that a good.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Strategy if you're operating in a psychologically unsafe environment. Yes,
because the more you can disarm the sense of threat
that would be perceived by you calling out a bad meeting,
the better your feedback or criticism disguised will be taking. Now,
(15:00):
if you're operating in a psychologically safe environment, you can
afford to be more blunt and assertive. We know that's
going to be more efficient and move things forward much
more effectively, and calling out specifically, you know, I don't
think this meeting is effective for this reason. You know
I'm coming from a place of wanting the meeting to
be better for everyone. Again, the level of psychological safety
(15:24):
really really matters in terms of the best most effective
approach that.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
You talk about putting in little moments of joy to
make people actually want to come to a meeting. What
can we do to make a meeting seem sort of fun,
I mean a little bit like a party.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I guess it's really important because if we're using meetings intentionally,
we should have fewer meetings, which means the meetings that
we have should be deeply human. Right, That's the purpose
of live synchronous interaction is those things that we need
our human empathy, our human body language trust to develop.
(15:58):
And we've gotten into, you know, a situation where people
have a visceral negative reaction to meetings. You ask people,
you know, do you like meetings? No one likes meetings.
You know you hear the grumbles right away. And so
I'm a big proponent of within all of our meetings,
as an organizer, you should be injecting at least one
moment of delight. It can be a five second moment,
(16:22):
it can be a two second moment, it can be
a minute moment. But delight is this very interesting combination
of joy and surprise. And I think the surprise element
is really important because it causes people to think differently
and remember that moment that they weren't expecting. So it
(16:43):
can be a shout out, you know, you've done a
good job on this. You know, the person wasn't expecting
that the shout out. It can be you're bringing a
food item that has a you know, cookies or cupcakes
that has you know, some personal significance to you, something
that will cause in employees and the people in the
room to have a lasting positive impression because that will
(17:06):
then make them want to show up the next time
engaged in the contributions and the content of the meeting.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Just to say here, I mean, it's probably not asking
people for a fun fact, right, I mean, is there
a sort of another one that we could do for
making a moment of delight?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yes, I think And we also, you know, I've seen
this this you know, negatively impacted meeting as well. When
we start to ask about weekend activities also anything where
you might have differences in terms of people's you know,
work life balance. You want to make sure your level
setting in terms of So that's why I love shout outs.
(17:47):
I love kudos. You know, everyone goes around and you know,
celebrate someone else. You know, we don't want to be
doing this in every meeting, but we know that peer
to peer recognition is also very effective and intrinsically motivated,
motivating for so many people. So that type of thing
where your level setting, you're ensuring you're not you know,
(18:09):
you're including everyone and asking questions where everyone feels excited
to contribute in some way.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well, We're going to take one more quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Rebecca Hines. Well,
I am back talking with Rebecca Hines, who is the
author of Your Best Meeting Ever. So switching gears a
little bit. Rebecca, I wonder if you can tell us
a little bit about how you work, Like what does
(18:37):
a day look like for you these days?
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Sure? So I try to structure my meetings very intentionally.
So I try. You know, I mentioned the four d
CEO tests in the book. A meeting should only happen
if you know fundamentally the purpose is to decide, debate, discuss,
or develop, And I'm pretty you know, stringent in terms
of that. If If I don't think that's the case,
I'll ask for an agenda, or I'll ask, you know,
(19:01):
what is my role in the meeting. I'll often, you know,
watch meetings asynchronously at one point five or two speed.
When I know that I'm not contributing value in the
meeting or reaping value from that that live synchronous communication.
I try to bundle different types of tasks. I think,
you know, I'm in the phase of my career where
(19:22):
I know how I work best, and I know when
you know I'm most creative. I know when I need
those deep focus blocks. If I'm doing similar types of activities,
I bundle those. I don't have too many back to
back meetings. Non negotiable for me is having you know,
some portion of every day where I'm at the gym
(19:43):
and working out and being active. Those are those are
non negotiables in terms of how I how I structure
my time.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
I'm curious, do you have a morning routine.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
I do have a morning routine at Ebbs and Flows.
You know, I'm at the late stages of life launching
this book, and so for the past year it's it's involved,
you know, doing work on the book before you know,
I go into my day job, and often that's you know,
a very early morning for a couple hours, and then
I'll switch gears for the majority of the day and
(20:17):
often I'll I'll go back and you know, catch up
on bookwork at the end of the day. It ebbs
and flows throughout my career, but I have learned in
terms of, you know, that balance of physical activity, taking
time each day where I'm off the screen, even if
it's for half an hour, and sleep. I try to,
(20:37):
you know, be relatively consistent about in terms of I
recognize how important that is in me being able to
show up each day.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Absolutely, so I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
So I'm a huge New Year's resolution person, and I
use resid lightly because they're more like goals for me.
I grew up as an athlete and I've always loved
goal setting and that's been something that has given me
a lot of stability and clarity and motivation through you know,
every phase of my life and career. And so, you know,
(21:16):
I love those three or four days before the start
of the new year where I'm tinkering at my New
Year's resolutions, new Year's goals. I usually have, you know,
I usually have twelve or sixteen each year, recognizing that,
you know, if I hit ten, that'll be that'll be
a success, and have them be from different categories as well.
And I find, you know, that's already taken me from
(21:38):
good to great in terms of how I'm approaching this
year and the intentionality with which you know, I'm spending
my time in investing my time.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Can you share one of them?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Oh, I'm so superstitious. Okay, all right, I'll have to,
I'll share. So I always have, you know, there are
two or three that are more physical physical activity related.
They're always two or three that are more family relationship oriented.
There are always two or three that are more work related.
I'm still very active doing research and academic research, so
(22:11):
I build in a category for that. And then also
I do have you know, one or two each year
that are about that delight and joy and being happy
and doing things that will make myself happy and others
happy as well. I'm a big believer in generosity and giving,
and so those are the sorts of categories that I
think about each year.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Gotcha, what are you looking forward to Right now.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I'm looking forward to the book launch. It's been so
fun to work with organizations and help them fix their
meeting dysfunctions. You know, I've last week I was working
with both a very large oil and gas company and
a book publisher and a tech company and seeing the
similarities but also the unique nuances of each industry and
person has been so fun. And shifting from the writing
(22:59):
to you know, the real practical which I love to
do as well.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Excellent And where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So my book is is everywhere your favorite bookstore. My
website's Rebecca Heines dot com and I'm active on LinkedIn
as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback on
this or any other episode, you can always reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(23:39):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(24:00):
listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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