The best experiment you’ll run this week

Switch from meetings to “fleetings”

Meetings are the biggest drain on our productivity and work satisfaction. So try this trick when organising your next meeting: only allow 20 mins for the entire meeting, instead of the default 60 mins. One of three things will happen:

1)   You’ll have a better meeting – people will stay more focused on the point of the meeting and get out of the room faster

2)   No difference – you’ll have a meeting that covers the same ground as a 60 min meeting, but in 20 mins

3)   You’ll realise you’ll need more time – some meetings need a lot of time to work through complex issues, but these are rarer than we like to convince ourselves

Other things that will help: send the agenda in advance, only invite people who HAVE to be at the meeting, stick to the agenda, have a meeting leader who keeps things focused on decision making, agree actions and owners. We know this stuff but tend to be lax in applying it.

Finally, try walking or standing meetings. They can feel odd at first but social dynamics and brain science confirms that these approaches lead to more productive and creative meetings.

“Work expands to fill the time available,” goes the old adage. If a 60 minute meeting can often be covered in a 20 minute “fleeting”, across a week, those extra 40 minute blocks can give people more time to innovate, build in much craved-for thinking time, or simply get the job done in our over-loaded schedules.

Give it a go for a week, see what you learn and then iterate until you find the perfect format for your company's culture.