Global Director Consumer Experience Ops (Social, Apps, Consumer Service Experience) | NIKE FAMILIES - CARE COUNCIL | Views are my own and do not reflect that of my employer
Let me tell you about No Meeting Fridays. We are going on year two of making the decision as a team to enforce No Meeting Fridays (which happen to also fall on remote days). And it has been one of the best things we've implemented. As a mom, my end-of-week stress levels are a tiny fraction of what they used to be. This morning, I got 30 more minutes of sleep and then cuddled in bed with my babies before throwing on a hat and hoodie and getting everyone ready for school drop off. The blessing of at least one slow(er) morning per week has helped the whole family - mentally, emotionally, and physically. We can roll out of Thursday with a list of heads down work that aggregated during the week and pound that out on Friday without distraction, heading into the weekend with an empty to do list. We still talk to each other on Fridays via text, slack and email, and if the world is really on fire, we will throw a quick (camera off) Zoom huddle together, but for the most part, the No Meeting policy has held. When you implement tactics like this, it's easy to think, "There's no way this will ever work." When really what it takes is a commitment to the change and an effort to figure it out.
Wish more places would actually commit to and have the discipline to do it! Kudos ????
I’ve implemented No Meeting Fridays as well but instead we call it “WeWork” Friday. It’s remote and I dedicate as many hours as needed directly with my team. It might be reviewing items that fell behind, it might be a creative brainstorm session, it might be writing a deck together - whatever they want. Unlimited time, my full attention, no makeup/hair Teams call. So they always know we have a working session waiting. Blocking the rest of the organization out of Friday meetings was the intial challenge.
a large amount of meeting time is wasted time. meetings which are just there to update should not be meetings. due to the risk of groupthink I question whether meetings are even the best way to devise a strategy - tend to end up having some dominant voices and some (often more intelligent) quieter voices which get lost. No meeting Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be great.
We've done no meeting Fridays for 2 years now in my region, and it's magical! I love having uninterrupted time for admin work to go into the weekend with a completed 'To Do' list ready to tackle Monday without dreading it! Because honestly if you have a meeting on Friday, the action items aren't going to be able to be completed until Monday most times anyway unless you're implying staff work over the weekend. So unless it's an emergency, treasure those admin Fridays!
I implemented a very similar concept in my team and the results have been increased commitment to delivery Mon - Thur and improved morale from my team. I have a diverse group of direct reports, a new mother, two single fathers, a young professional etc and this allows each of them to use the flexibility it provides to focus on their priorities. Big success for us...but there is zoom call that occurs when emergencies occur as well.
It IS possible! We just started No Meeting Wednesdays and it's game changing. I've worked places who do this on a smaller scale, too, where they have "heads down" blocks on Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoons where no one books meetings. The commitment to focus time is essential for productivity - and by extension, our mental health and overall well-being.
Absolutely love how this has been implemented and gone from strategy to practice! Would love to hear more around how the culture shifted to embrace this and put the right boundaries in place for it to take off.
Most Toastmasters International clubs said “virtual or hybrid meetings won’t work” and then the pandemic forced EVERY club, other service organizations, church and school to rethink what’s possible. If you make meetings on Fridays a thing (late mornings and 1 pm central used to be common times for Microsoft) then nothing changes. If you move them to recorded (and then people can catch up whenever it’s convienent) or move the day, you free up that day for catch up, deep focus work and the other things that we all need a chance to do! Great post as always!
Brand Manager at Equinix
1 年Great concept in theory.