We've fallen into a habit at Buffer of collaborating primarily through recurring group and 1:1 meetings. As an organization, we have many docs filled with agenda items for these 1:1 and group status meetings.

It's something I've been reflecting on for a while, and I had a theory that if we could transfer all of those agenda items to be individual discussion topics in an async, transparent collaboration space, we would benefit immensely.

There are a number of problems with prescheduled recurring meetings utilized to discuss multiple agenda items:

• Agenda items end up being "saved up" for the upcoming 1:1 or group meeting, which slows down progress and leads to items being discussed later rather than when they arise and the person has the most clarity in their mind
• These agenda-filled status meetings often have too many items in the list, and everything feels rushed. If it's the primary way collaboration happens, it means that collaboration is constrained to be shallow rather than really delving into a topic.
• Many agenda items can benefit from someone being involved who happens to not be in that 1:1 or group meeting
• As a leader I found myself sharing the same current strategic reflection or decision across multiple 1:1 and group meetings, which quickly feels inefficient when a broad group could benefit from knowing that information

So a couple of weeks ago I decided to conduct an experiment at Buffer. I called it Collaboration Week. Here's how it worked:

• For the week, we cancelled recurring meetings and had all of our discussions in Campsite, the tool we use for async collaboration and decision making.
• Anyone could start a topic, and others would jump in and add their reflections.
• The discussions we had were across all areas, and the team didn't shy away from raising significant challenges and bold ideas.
• A wide range of folks across different areas participated in very constructive discussion and debate, and we had a number of breakthroughs.
• Towards the end of the week I nudged the group to take discussions towards decisions and conclusions.

Overall, the week was a huge success and I'm now reflecting on the week and making decisions as to how it should affect and adjust how we work on an ongoing basis.

We covered many more discussions than we would have been able to synchronously. And they all happened out in the open for the whole company to observe. I found that people regularly took words from another topic and quoted them to help us make the right decisions in other areas. There's something about building the passage of time into a topic naturally by having it in an asynchronous collaboration tool that helped us feel less rushed than we do in our meeting-heavy collaboration style. And perhaps the most exciting outcome was that we reached all the way to fundamentals in many areas, rather than solving micro-issues and remaining at local maxima.