Overview

Meetings are an integral part of the workplace, serving as a platform for communication, collaboration, and decision-making. However, they can also be time-consuming and unproductive if not conducted effectively or if there are, just simply, too many. Ami Vora, CPO at Faire, said it best in her article "Getting out of meetings and into focused work"

"Meetings aren’t work - they're a cost of getting work done." - Ami Vora

Ami suggests that while meetings are necessary for collaboration and progress, they themselves do not directly contribute to the actual work being done. In other words, meetings are a necessary overhead, like paying rent for an office or purchasing office supplies. They are important for facilitating work, but they don't produce the tangible results. This quote emphasises the necessity of efficient, productive meetings, and having a well-thought-out meeting strategy, such as avoiding back-to-back scheduling, to prevent wasted time and resources.

Elizabeth Ayer, on the other hand, has a differing view on meetings where she says that meetings are the work.

But what if, hear me out, what if the only work that matters in a knowledge economy happens when we are together? What if the reason we can’t seem to fix meetings is that we’re mischaracterizing “the work” in the first place?

Elizabeth's 2023 article "Meetings *are* the work" is worth a read.

Meetings *are* the workMedium

“Meetings are at the heart of an effective organization, and each meeting is an opportunity to clarify issues, set new directions, sharpen focus, create alignment, and move objectives forward.” ― Paul Axtell, Make Meetings Matter (2020)

Make Meetings Matter: How to Turn Meetings from Status …Goodreads

Meeting Types

The 10 Most Common Types of Work Meetings (and How to Run Them Well)Better Humans

One-on-Ones

Agile Meetings

Design Critiques

Stakeholder Meetings

Retrospectives

Workshops

Performance Reviews

All-hands

Skip-level Meetings

PIP Meetings

Exit Interviews

Public Speaking

Further Reading