Draft - Why I significantly reduced my recurring meetings

In the past couple of months, I’ve made a significant shift in the way I meet and work with people in my team.

For years now, I’ve met with all of my direct reports weekly, and this is generally the conventional wisdom for a tech company around our size.

§ Problems with recurring weekly 1-1 meetings

Weekly 1-1s come at a significant cost in time which could be used more effectively

If you have 8 direct reports, as I do, and you meet with those people weekly, that is already 8 hours a week of meetings. Adding in some regular group meetings such as executive team meetings, various leaders coming together, group leadership meetings with various areas, etc. and we’re easily at around 12 hours per week of pre-scheduled meetings.

We work a four day workweek at Buffer, and so counting 8 hours per day, that already takes up almost 40% of my working hours. I would usually have at least another 3-4 hours per week of meetings for current projects, so we can see how we can easily have 50% of working hours in meetings.

Weekly 1-1 meetings don’t allow for deeper brainstorming

One issue I’ve found with recurring weekly 1:1 meetings, is that they don’t allow for deeper brainstorming.

A best practice of regular 1:1 meetings is to have a shared agenda, and with that, both parties add to this agenda in advance of the meeting. It’s common to have 4-6 items in the agenda, and if you schedule an hour, this means you’ll have around 10 minutes for any topic.

The problem here, is that each topic ends up treated equally, when they should not be. Some topics might only need 10 minutes, others may deserve an hour.

And when you have weekly 1:1s for all direct reports, you generally do not have much free time in your schedule for these deeper brainstorms and discussions: Weekly 1-1s come at a significant cost in time which could be used more effectively.

One solution to this is to move from weekly to monthly 1:1s, and create time for deeper brainstorms: The benefits of switching from weekly to monthly 1-1s.

■ Weekly 1-1s lead you to save up topics

When you meet weekly with direct reports, I’ve found that it leads to both parties saving up problems and discussion points for that meeting. The problem with this, is that many of these items could have been solved rapidly

Weekly 1-1s reduce the velocity of an organization

Because ■ Weekly 1-1s lead you to save up topics, this can significantly reduce the velocity of an organization.

Rather than small issues being quickly unblocked, they are often saved for a 1:1 meeting. This could be a day away or a week away.

And when you add this up across the whole organization, then the issue compounds exponentially.

This is a key reason to seek § A better way to work with direct reports than weekly 1-1s.

Hierarchy can stop the right people meeting

When 1:1 meetings happen too frequently, for example weekly, and you only generally meet with direct reports, it can force all work to happen through that hierarchical structure.

Whereas, if you were to spread the agenda items of a 1:1 throughout the week, you’d have the opportunity to pull in other people within that person’s team, or across the organization, who could provide valuable contributions.

Weekly 1-1s force you to work in unnatural ways

In general, I’ve found that frequent recurring 1:1s can lead to working together with people in ways that feel unnatural and suboptimal.

§ A better way to work with direct reports than weekly 1-1s

The benefits of switching from weekly to monthly 1-1s

As I reflected on some of the § Problems with recurring weekly 1-1 meetings, I started to consider making a change in the cadence of these meetings. Initially, I thought about just adjusting to biweekly, which would certainly have been the easier change to make. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that moving to biweekly wouldn’t really change that much.

Moving from weekly to biweekly would probably lead to many of those same problems. However, adjusting from weekly to monthly was a drastic enough change to force an overall paradigm shift in these meetings, changing the purpose of them entirely. This is something I’m still in the midst of exploring, but it is already feeling powerful for me with the people I work directly with.

Recurring 1-1s work best as high level check-ins rather than for real work

I’ve found that when thinking about structure and cadence of § 1-1 meetings, recurring 1:1s work much better as high level check-ins rather than for real work. This may apply only for small businesses, which is my experience with Buffer. Perhaps with a long chain of command, it is more valuable to work through many layers of regular 1:1s and quick decision making, rather than doing real work together.

Overall, Weekly 1-1s force you to work in unnatural ways. What they do work really well for, though, is:

  • Checking in on performance feedback
  • Discussing career goals and current feelings of the role, the work, the challenges

Due to the higher level nature of these topics, my current belief is that it is better to do recurring 1:1s less frequently, for example monthly, rather than weekly or biweekly.

Instead, the real work should happen in ad-hoc meetings: Ad-hoc meetings allow you to capture the best energy of a topic.

Reduce recurring 1-1s to enable better collaboration

There are many problems with hierarchy: Hierarchy is useful but has many downsides. One of the key ones is that Hierarchy can stop the right people meeting.

One key way I’ve found to improve this situation is to reduce recurring 1:1s. Rather than meeting weekly which is often the recommended cadence, I have found monthly to provide many benefits:

The importance of open-ended longer brainstorming sessions

I’ve found that as you grow and have clear leaders for functional areas, it’s easy as the CEO to lose the time for open-ended brainstorming sessions with those leaders.

However, often it is the gnarly complex problems with the organization that need that deeper discussion and reflection between the CEO and leaders, in order to arrive at decisions and changes which will truly propel the company forward.

Therefore, it’s vital to find ways to make time for these longer brainstorming sessions.

Related: big problems need open-ended time.
Related: it’s important to allow yourself to go to the ideal, the end destination, before deciding the next step.

Ad-hoc meetings allow you to capture the best energy of a topic

Rather than recurring, scheduled meetings, ad-hoc meetings allow you to capitalize on the energy around a topic in that moment. If you wait for the next recurring meeting to discuss that topic, often the same quality of thoughts and momentum is not present.

Very quick ad-hoc 15 minute meetings to unblock

Closing