Revolutionizing Corporate Meetings: Lessons from Asana’s Meeting Purge
By Ivy Liu • February 14, 2024 • 2 min read •
This piece was originally featured on WorkLife.
Shopify garnered attention recently with its decision to overhaul its calendars and introduce a meeting cost calculator. This move prompted other major corporations to rethink their approach to hosting meetings and their impact on employees’ schedules.
Some organizations, such as Asana, took their efforts a step further by intensifying their ongoing initiatives to streamline their meeting processes. In early 2022, Asana conducted a unique exercise known as “meeting doomsday.” Employees were tasked with identifying recurring meetings that offered little value and were then instructed to eliminate all standing meetings with fewer than five participants from their calendars for 48 hours.
The outcome was remarkable: within a few months, the duration of meetings decreased significantly. Many 30-minute sessions were shortened to 15 minutes, weekly meetings were rescheduled to bi-weekly or monthly, and some meetings were removed altogether. This adjustment translated to an average saving of 11 hours per month per individual, equating to approximately 3.5 workweeks per year.
For years, the issue of excessive meetings and its adverse effects on employee well-being and productivity has been a topic of discussion. Asana began addressing the challenge of managing internal meetings over a decade ago by implementing a “No Meeting Wednesdays” policy. However, research revealed that employees felt resentful when colleagues disregarded the designated meeting-free day.
Dr. Rebecca Hinds, Asana’s Work Innovation Lab lead, shared insights on the strategies employed by the company to optimize its meetings. Collaborating with Stanford professor Bob Sutton, a partner in the Work Innovation Lab, they developed a structured rating system for participants to evaluate the effectiveness of their meetings. This system focused on two key dimensions: the impact of meetings and the level of effort required for preparation and follow-up.
Even before the 48-hour elimination period, participants in the “Meeting Reset” program noted significant improvements. By using the rating scale to assess their meetings, many individuals modified or eliminated sessions that demanded excessive effort with minimal returns. In total, the 60 participants managed to reclaim 265 hours each month by eliminating unproductive recurring meetings.
For the full article, visit here