Recently Shopify decided to kill all its meetings, and somehow it was newsworthy. I’ve personally been a part of multiple efforts to combat meetings. A few years back Airbnb declared a “calendar amnesty.” With new guidance, everyone’s calendars were summarily wiped clean. It was well intentioned, and it was beautiful — for a hot minute.
But in the least surprising plot twist since The Sixth Sense, it did not work. At all. Administrative assistants prepared for the calmaggedon, poised at 12:01am to reschedule all their meetings. No one’s calendar was empty for long, and after a short respite everyone was back in meeting hell.
We haven’t seen an update on how things are going for Shopify, and I wish them luck! But I’m not optimistic. They, along with so many other companies out there, have clearly not yet realized the fundamental truth about meetings:
Meetings are a symptom, not the disease.
Why we meet
Why do we meet? Seems like an obvious question but it’s worth asking. I would say that we meet to get work done. It doesn’t always (usually?) turn out that way, but the ostensible purpose of meetings is to advance a goal. To do work. To share information. To make decisions or at least make progress in a way that wouldn’t be possible without a synchronous conversation.