Published · 4 min read
Meetings are part of leadership. We need them to align and understand. Yet, we often do it at the expense of action. The success lies in the milestones achieved. In essence, "Fewer Meetings, More Milestones" philosophy where action is more important.
Don't get me wrong. Communication is the backbone of any successful team. But let's be honest, how many times have you sat through a meeting thinking, "This could have been an email"? It’s exactly why we need to embrace a new approach. Here are a few angles I’d like to take.
Most meetings are endurance tests, not problem-solving sessions. You sit there for an hour, maybe longer, waiting your turn, half-listening while Slack pings in the background, and walk out with a fuzzy “action plan” that could’ve been written in two lines of text. That isn’t alignment. That’s time theft.
Now compare that to a huddle. Five to ten minutes. No slides. No ceremony. No Scrum theater. I don’t even like Scrum, but the huddle idea makes sense. You get in, say what’s blocking you, clear the air, and get out. Think of it like a sports team huddle: quick reset, quick alignment, then back into the game.
I’ve seen teams unlock more in a week by replacing long recurring meetings with daily five-minute huddles than they did in months of “deep dives.” Because here’s the thing: a huddle forces you to get to the point. No rambling. No death by someone's status update. Everyone hears what matters, and then everyone gets back to work.
Achieve more by meeting less
Most meetings exist for one reason: status updates. Let’s be honest, that’s the worst way to spend human brainpower. You drag ten people into a call just to hear what could’ve been a Slack thread. That’s not collaboration, that’s group reading time.
Make updates async by default. Status updates belong in Slack threads or project boards where everyone can check in when they actually have the bandwidth. That way nobody’s burning cognitive load listening to fifteen minutes of updates that don’t even apply to them.
Decisions? Same rule. Don’t schedule a meeting. Write a one-page doc. Spell out the context, the options, and the decision. Share it. Let people comment. The beauty of a written doc is that it scales infinitely. You don’t have to replay the same conversation three times because someone missed the meeting. And it forces clarity. If you can’t explain the decision in a page, maybe you don’t understand it yet. Decision docs become organizational memory.
The tools are there to keep us out of rooms we don’t need to be in. Jira, Notion, Slack, Confluence. Pick your poison. The point isn’t the tool, it’s the principle: use software to do the repetitive communication so humans can do the creative work. Every meeting you replace with a doc or a thread is brainpower you free up for actual problem-solving.
I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve wasted in “update” meetings that went nowhere. You know the type: ten people on a call, eight of them zoning out, one person rambling through details that only matter to them, and the rest pretending to listen. That’s not collaboration, that’s torture.
Here’s how I handle it. If the goal is updates, we don’t meet. Everyone drops their status into a simple newsletter thread. Two minutes of reading beats sixty minutes of nodding along. People skim what’s relevant and move on. Nobody’s brain gets fried listening to things that don’t touch their work.
When I do call a meeting, it’s because we actually need to wrestle with a decision or untangle a real problem. Something where you can’t just leave a comment and move on. Those are rare. They should be rare.
The rule I live by is simple: if a chat doesn’t move the project forward, it doesn’t deserve to be a meeting. Put it in Slack. Write it in a doc. Save the calendar for things that actually matter.
Cutting meetings isn’t just about clearing the calendar. It’s about trust. If you give people back their time and the freedom to make decisions, they actually start owning the work. They don’t need you in the room to keep moving.
That’s the whole point of leadership. It’s not running endless meetings. It’s creating a team that can operate without you hovering. Quick huddles for alignment, tools for updates, real conversations only when they matter — that’s how you build a team that’s fast, focused, and not constantly drained.
So open your calendar. Look at that “Schedule Meeting” button. And ask yourself, do you really need it? Most of the time, the answer is no.
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