“Meetings have become weapons of mass dysfunction.” Rebecca Hinds, PhD
Attendance is not engagement.
Tolerance of bad meetings is permission for more.
Create Your Best Meeting
#1. Cut Your Meeting Debt (Volume)
The most powerful meeting skill is knowing when not to meet.
Take back calendar control. Run a calendar cleanse. Delete all recurring meetings. Re-add only those that earn it.
Audit every meeting by impact vs. effort.
#2. Measure What Actually Matters (Measurement)
Stop using attendance, duration, or “calendar fullness” as success metrics.
Measure meetings by:
- Decision quality
- Progress made
- Clarity of next actions
Ask after meetings:
- Did this change what we do next?
- Could this have been asynchronous?
Kill meetings that can’t justify their cost in outcomes.
#3. Become a Meeting Minimalist (Structure)
Strip meetings to essentials.
- Cap attendance (smaller is better).
- Shorten default meeting lengths.
- Limit agenda items.
- End recurring meetings by default unless renewed.
- Rename meetings so the purpose is unmistakable.
- Remove people who don’t actively contribute.
Move status updates out of meetings.
Use meetings only for:
- Decisions
- Conflict
- Sense-making
Tip: Eliminate meetings that exist only to compensate for broken information flow.
#4. Design for Engagement (User-Centric Design)
- Clarify who the meeting is for.
- Design for participation, not spectatorship.
- Rotate facilitation.
- Build in moments for thinking, not just talking.
- End with explicit decisions or commitments.
#5. Use Technology Intentionally (Technology)
Tools don’t fix bad design.
- Stop defaulting to video.
- Reduce slide dependency.
- Use AI to: summarize decisions and track action items.
If a meeting doesn’t earn its place, it shouldn’t exist.
What’s one way to make your meetings better?
This post is adapted from Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done by Rebecca Hinds, PhD.
