Quick Thought – Meeting Free Days Also Say Something About Your Workplace Culture
Yes, I am on record as saying that the most important thing in a remote workplace is communication, in fact, I’m a fan of over-communicating. That doesn’t have to mean more meetings though. It can, honestly, just mean making use of all of the communication tools we have, especially when the discussion does not need to be had in real-time.
If you make Monday “meeting-free” but cram five days’ worth of meetings into the other four days of the week, you’re not helping the situation. You’re just rearranging deck chairs. The real change comes in figuring out how to make do with less meeting time, by taking advantage of alternatives when that makes sense, and by learning how to have more efficient meetings. (Start by not scheduling every meeting for 1 hour, for example. A 10-minute conversation can be a 10-minute meeting. There is no law that says all meetings must be divisible into 30-minute increments just because your Outlook calendar defaults to that.)