Work Check Podcast - Does your team need a regular No Meeting Day?

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The latest Atlassian Work Check Podcast is out and it's another great one -Does your team need a regular No Meeting Day? Give a listen and weigh in with your own comments below. 

And as usual, lots of good arguments on both sides. I won't spoil who won the debate before you listen, but here's my take on the question. 

Organizations are full of different personalities, as is life. I think some people actually thrive on meetings and love the camaraderie and time together, even if things aren't all that productive sometimes. Others cringe at the thought of any type of meeting. 

So, to some extent, that might describe which side of the fence some people come down on. Another thing (as brought up in the podcast) is a question of control. Do I get to control my own time and schedule? Or should a full day be blocked out regardless?

For me, I think most organizations have too many meetings as a whole. Jira should be a great way to reduce if not eliminate most, if not all, status meetings. Your project status should be easily viewable in Jira. On the other hand, collaboration is essential. But do you really need meetings to force collaboration? Or should it happen organically between those involved? 

Is a full day of no meetings too much? I don't think so, but maybe there is a more flexible solution. Maybe have two 4 hour blocks of no meetings during the week instead of a single day. Let's face it, rarely will you need 8 full hours every week to solve a single problem. Just the fact that you have 8 focused hours of work time a week is huge. It's a Developer's dream and probably a Marketer's nightmare.   :-)

What are your thoughts? 

[Dan Breyen]

I could be wrong, but I think it goes back to not having meetings for meeting sake.  Reviewing your meetings and eliminating redundancy should be acceptable in a work environment.  If a manager has 3 different status meetings with three different groups, then there's some potential to reduce meetings or explain the same information to all three groups in a different manner. (Using Jira!).  Give them a dashboard with the pertinent information, and potentially cancel all three meetings just bought you some time.

[Samie Kaufman - Your Gal at Gliffy]

"Probably a marketer's nightmare" < I chuckled! I love having low- or no-meeting days to get through some nagging tasks and actually think about some of the strategic issues on my projects or brands. Right now I have overdue onboarding tasks for a part of our marketing tech stack that I need to get to, and a few hours uninterrupted is really the only way to tackle it. 

But, what you shared that I do really agree with is that some roles or projects might inherently need more collaboration and that different people are looking for different levels of social fulfillment from work. I think there's a difference between pulling people into a room for a check-in or some other meeting that might not need to happen vs. working directly with a colleague to solve a specific problem — I want flexibility to be able to have those momentum-critical conversations even if it's a "no meeting" day.

I'm also guilty of having a little less hustle on my no-meeting days, to be honest. I think setting and sharing clear, specific goals on what I need to get done/deliver can help me stay focused.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

It depends on the situation actually. But as it is said, it depends on the personality rather than on the company policy of working.

I think I've been more for no meeting day before listening to the podcast. However, after hearing the pros and cons I think it's more about actually making these meetings you have more effective in order to reduce meeting hours. That's definitely what I'll aim for the future meetings as it was actually quite recently that I started to have my calendar sometimes overbooked and to do some 'actual' work after hours as that was the only time I could do some 'productive' work. Probably it would be a good idea to check Atlassian Team Playbook as there's some really good content there.

Anyhow, this was a really good episode. 👌 Would definitely recommend it to everyone who's struggling with having too many meetings.

[Summer.Hogan]

This was a great Work Check episode; actually one of my favorites! I have so many opinions about this topic, but the most prevalent one is unless your company mandates something, do what is best for you! 

I was involved in a conversation with our CEO recently and he gave some really good advice, which is don't be afraid to ask what the purpose of a meeting is and decline if it is not worth your time. He also asked each of us to think about how much money a meeting costs a company. If you have 10 people in a meeting and it is an hour, imagine what each of those peoples salary is and figure it out. I bet it is a lot of money. 

At my company we have what is called Focus Time where we are not allowed to schedule any meetings during this 5 hour block of time and we are also not supposed to chat or bother people during that time. It is so great and I love it! It really helps me get my heads down work done every week! Without the focus time, I would not be able to focus purely on work without being disrupted by a meeting coming up. 

[Amanda Barber]

I always love this podcast! We implemented what has turned into "Less Meetings" Wednesdays about a year ago by request from our UX designer. As someone with ADHD, she was really pushing for some deep work time. Since she left, we've maintained this day, but sometimes there are still meetings scheduled. Our team uses the time to pair program if both parties wish to as well. We came up with some fun names for our day - "Slack Off Wednesday" (turn off Slack, don't slack off...), "Work Only Wednesday AKA WOW" :-D 

[Ram Kumar Aravindakshan _Adaptavist_]

Thanks for sharing

[Dam]

dreaming about a no meeting day :) 

[Sri Kumar]

Thanks for sharing this. As someone who moved from one company ( where me and my team was following No Meeting Fridays) to a different company where the role recommends you be there for meeting on all days. It took me some time to adjust to the change. 
I try my best to educate my new Team and My customer about No meeting Fridays( As of now, I have been able to accomplish, Less Meeting Friday)

[Collista Lewingdon]

I am a huge fan of this idea, and even try to have a majority of my meetings in one day. I did send a proposal to my team manager after listening to this podcast to see what he thinks about making this a team wide initiative. 

[Sanjog Sigdel]

In my previous organization we used to have No Meetings Friday. This would give team members to quickly wrapup their work on time and have a bonding time with the team during the Happy Hours