Not Everything Needs a Meeting: You Have Options
Raise your hand if you’ve ever sat through a meeting and thought, “this could have been an email.” Now raise your other hand if you’ve been in an email thread so long that you lost the will to live. We’ve all been there. The problem isn’t just too many meetings, it’s ineffective and pointless meetings about the wrong things.
The WFH Meeting Epidemic
Flexible work options have made many people’s lives easier, no doubt. But let’s be honest, somewhere along the way, we forgot how to communicate like normal human beings. What used to be a quick walk over to a coworker’s desk has now turned into a full 45-minute meeting with half the company invited. A simple clarification question? Meeting. A five-minute decision? Meeting. It’s just crazy. Just pick up the phone! Not everything has to be a scheduled event with an invite, agenda, and the “circle back” nonsense.
Not Everyone Needs to Be in the “Room”
Too many meetings are filled with people who don’t need to be there. If there are six people in the meeting, but only three have anything to contribute, then guess what? Those three should meet, and the others should get an email summary. Simple.
Not every conversation needs to involve the entire team, and frankly, half the time, people are just sitting in meetings to CYA (cover your ass) rather than actually solving problems. If you’re scheduling a meeting, ask yourself: “Who really needs to be here?” If you don’t have a solid answer, then you probably don’t need the meeting at all.
The 12-Person Zoom Call From Hell
I once sat through a Zoom call with 12 people. TWELVE. That’s not a meeting—that’s a jury deliberation. The reality? Maybe four people actually needed to be involved in the discussion, and the other eight were just there to “stay in the loop” (aka waste an hour of our lives).
Meetings should be designed for action, not for filling up calendars. If a meeting has too many people, decisions get slowed down, discussions go in circles, and nothing productive happens. Let the key people meet, then send a recap to the rest.
Call, Email, or Meet?
Here’s a framework for deciding what’s necessary:
Need to clarify something? Pick up the phone.
Email chain getting ridiculously long? Might be time for a quick meeting.
Will everyone invited add value? If not, trim the list or just send a summary.
Is this just a show-and-tell meeting for people to peacock their progress? Save it for an email.
Are people scheduling meetings to justify their job? That’s a deeper issue entirely.
Meeting-Free Days & Reality Checks
If you have the authority, try implementing meeting-free days. I personally aim to keep Mondays and Fridays clear so I can actually get work done instead of sitting in back-to-back calls. If you manage a team, take it a step further, run a meeting-free week and see what happens. I guarantee you’ll learn two things:
Some people will suddenly become way more productive.
Others will flounder because their entire job revolves around scheduling and being in meetings.
It’ll be eye-opening, trust me.
The Bottom Line
Meetings aren’t the problem, but bad meetings are. Keep them short, invite only those who need to be there, and stop turning simple conversations into full-blown video calls. The next time you’re about to schedule a meeting, ask yourself: Could this just be a phone call or an email? If the answer is yes, do everyone a favour and delete that meeting invite.
