Can Fewer Meetings Reverse Quiet Quitting? Research Says ‘Yes’

October 28, 2022

Written by: Lisa Bodell

The demand for “zero meetings” has become a bargaining chip for employees considering a job change, according to a new study from software firm Otter.ai and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Participants reported having too many meetings on their calendars, which makes them feel “annoyed” and “frustrated.”

In other news…water is wet.

Internal meetings have been a prickly area for more than a decade, but the leverage wielded by employees amid the Mass Resignation should motivate leaders to re-examine this aspect of their organization. As a workplace expert with several books and a TED talk on simplification, “zero meetings” has been my rallying cry for years.

Through the process of researching Why Simple Wins, I found workplace complexity to originate from two sources: the organization itself and individual employees. Organizational complexity relates to industry regulations, as well as the number of people, steps, decisions and data points required to do something meaningful in your company. For example, the number of approvals in your hiring process or the compliance requirements for managing consumer data in the U.K. or South Korea.

Individual complexity, on the other hand, refers to red tape created by one person or a single org. A real-world instance is that VP who holds a five-hour weekly meeting or the business unit with a special knack for PowerPoints containing 200-plus slides.

In your own company, meetings are influenced by organizational culture as well as the individuals who lead and attend them. To root out complexity in meetings that you lead or attend, answer the following six statements with either “Consistently,” “Sometimes,” “Rarely” or “Never.”

1. I spend 20% or less of my time each week in unproductive meetings/calls.

2. I operate/encourage my team to operate with simplification in mind.

3. The meetings that I lead start and end on time.

4. Meetings in my org have a clear purpose and agenda.

5. Only essential people are invited to meetings I attend.

6. I feel comfortable declining meeting invitations or delegating attendance to someone else.

Calculate your total by using the following scorecard for each answer:

· Consistently = 0

· Sometimes = 1 point

· Rarely = 2 points

· Never = 3 points

If you tallied 1 to 4 points, look for opportunities to simplify meetings in your org. Right now, this aspect of your day-to-day is functional but at least one “Never” or “Rarely” answer is creating complexity. Examine that area and course-correct now to avoid contamination in other aspects of the business.

If your total is 5 to 9 points, meetings in your org are displaying symptoms of complexity and if left unchecked, will likely spread to other aspects of operations. Consider performing a meeting audit immediately to determine which meetings are valuable — and which should be thrown into a lake of fire.

If you scored 10 to 14 points, meetings are a major source of complexity. It’s likely that the issue goes beyond your org and extends to the entire company. With complexity affecting everything from status meetings and brainstorm sessions to planning and decision-making, your company is presumably stuck in first gear on multiple fronts.

Finally, if you calculated a sum of 15 or more, meetings have reached dangerous levels of complexity. Even though company resources are being wasted at an alarming pace, employees have accepted the status quo. People are resigned to a mentality of quiet quitting or they’re actively trying to sabotage agents of change. Either way, the state of your meetings requires immediate attention.

Now, share the six statements and diagnosis with your teams and ask them to generate the likely reasons why complexity has hijacked meetings — and offer ideas for simplifying. Schedule a session to discuss both reasons and solutions, which should be captured on a whiteboard.

After debating the feasibility of solutions, take a vote on which three to implement immediately — and do it. Examples of solutions might include “limit meetings to eight or fewer attendees” or “every meeting invite must include an agenda” and “commit to meeting-free Fridays.” To prevent a return to business as usual, consider creating a meeting mantra with these expectations and share it across the entire company.

If you need to validate this new approach to the larger business, include a reminder that meetings are expensive. Reducing or eliminating unnecessary meetings will not only improve employee morale and boost retention, it also helps organizations drastically cut costs. For companies with 100 employees, the savings are around $2.5M a year and for companies of 5000, the figure increases to more than $100M.

Examining how meetings are conducted in your org — and eliminating those that have outlived their usefulness — can help retain employees and steer the business toward higher productivity. Encourage your team to decline any meeting without a clear purpose, decision-maker or agenda and reward employees who consistently demonstrate courage in this area. Continue questioning new meetings and streamlining current meetings and you’ll witness a shift away from quiet quitting and toward a smarter, simpler way to work.

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