One of the most powerful things I learned (way too late in my career) was how to become hyper efficient through meeting diligence. And there's one framework at the cornerstone of this.
I don't have to tell you how much of a time sink meetings are for most companies.
It wasn't until I began working for truly remote companies (i.e. office-less workforce) that it dawned on me how much of an unlock it is to cull them wherever possible.
Historically, meetings were booked for anything and everything.
Progress updates on projects/work.
Regularly scheduled because someone decided it would be good to check-in with one another.
The ad hoc 'can I ask you something' that turns into a full blown half hour to an hour of your day - gone.
The fact is that these kinds of meetings impact the deep work necessary to deliver critical outcomes for you and your business. They distract you from true productivity, and harm your career in the process.
But then I was introduced to the POST framework — and we made it pre-condition necessary for any meeting to go ahead had. The person who wanted the meeting had to include this acronym in the meeting request.
Here's what it stands for:
Purpose: why are we having the meeting?
Outcome: what goal should we accomplish by having this meeting?
Structure: what are we doing in the meeting? Are we making decisions, or are we brainstorming something? what is everyone's role?
Timing: how long is it going for and how does the agenda fit within this duration?
When you have to do even the most basic amount of work to even have a meeting (remember, this is a precondition for having one) you'd be surprised how many of the ad-hoc meetings fall away, and even the cyclical one's (each meeting needs to be justified).
Take this a step further.
If the meeting is a progress update, or is otherwise sharing information one-directionally, make it asynchronous and do it via written or video recorded update.
You'd be surprised how much faster things get done when you can read it and respond in your own time (with deeper thought or while listening to at 2x speed).
Now it goes without saying that something like this needs to be adopted from the top down, but by piloting an approach and measuring the outcomes (reduced meeting time, improved output) you'd be surprised how easily the case stacks up to adopt this approach across a company.
Have you ever tried an approach like this at your company?