The one time I agreed with Shopify.

Good morning, friends!

Last year, Shopify announced that they were “getting rid of all meetings”, or something to that effect. The reaction was polarized between outrage (“You can’t get things done without any collaboration!”) and exhausted vindication (“I keep saying that these constant Zoom meetings are just slowing my work down!”). Microsoft reported last year that meetings for the average Teams user went up over 250% since 2020 (though I am pretty sure no one was even using Teams in 2020, so take that with a grain of salt) and this week, Slack announced that they themselves were cutting down on calls, based on findings that most people could only productively handle 2 hours of meetings per day. I feel that, and I’m not sure video calling tech is making it worse (we truly only can stare into a digital approximation of human faces for so long), or better (in real life meetings, you can’t just press a button and vanish).

In the end, it turns out that Shopify was just doing a bit of a reset; temporarily cancelling all recurring meetings for a short experimental period, then re-adding the ones that turned out to be actually necessary. And I get it. Unlike Slack, I don’t believe there is a magic amount of meetings one should or should not be in; of course an executive with 15 direct reports should be in more than a run-of-the-mill coder. Personally, I think takes that pit workers and management against each other (“management just wants to babysit remote workers with meetings!”) are simplistic and unproductive. Most managers are also just people trying to get their work done, and don’t sit around plotting how to make your life miserable. I think we’re all kind of just not sure what our individual threshold is between too many meetings and a lack of connection/collaboration.

So I’m going to do what I’ve never really done; suggest you follow Shopify’s lead. In January, after your main post-holiday reconnect, try out a meeting reset for your team. Try going 2-4 weeks without standing calendar items that involve 3 or more people, and evaluate what goes wrong (and what goes right). I’m not suggesting you do this out of nowhere– suddenly clearing people’s calendars without any notice was where Shopify and co went wrong. Give folks plenty of time to ask questions, and consult them when the experiment is over. What did they feel they missed? What did they gain? What meetings absolutely need to be re-added, re-organized or done away with? You’ll now know your threshold, and go into the rest of the year feeling fresh, rather than weighed down.

Stay bright,

Nora

In case you missed it: The recording of our free webinar on modern HR for non-profit folks is now live! (password: &7Ss825e). We’ve also put together an Early Guide for our non-profit friends, covering each stage of non-profit growth and what people processes and policies you’ll want to roll out for each. Check it out below.

Bright Reads

• Lattice published a 2023 “State of People Strategy” report. Some interesting nuggets: organizations saying DEI is a “top priority” is down 50% from 2020, and HR people are burnt out.

• A look at the real live (and vastly underpaid) people behind the screen of AI. 

• A tech conference is accused of making up fake women speakers.

• A startup is trying to build a lucid dreaming app so that developers can keep coding in their sleep (lol).

• There may be such a thing as too much psychological safety at work.

• Are Americans actually pretty happy at work? The Atlantic thinks so.

Coming Up

• Hanukkah started on December 7, and lasts 8 days

• Winter solstice is on December 21

• Christmas is on December 25

• Kwanzaa week begins December 26

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