I Hate Meetings

Here’s How We Handle Meetings At Drift

This post is based on something I shared on our internal wiki at Drift.

In the early days of a company, meetings are rare. But then before you know it, a 15 person company turns into a 30 person company (and beyond) — and you’re spending more of your time in meetings.

I’ve seen it happen at companies of all sizes and stages.

Generally, I’m a hater of meetings, mostly because very few of them are run properly and because as a company grows, meetings seem to benefit people who just like to meet (as opposed to the people who like to do/make things).

While I realize that I am extreme on the subject, I do think companies should push to minimize the number of meetings they have.

One of the things that can help here is to have guardrails in-place for when you do need to have a meeting.

Here are the guardrails we have for meetings at Drift (copied and pasted from our internal wiki):

• Please try to minimize the number of meetings we have. Try hard to get it done without a meeting.
• When you do have a meeting please keep them small and focused on a clear agenda. Unless the meeting is a 1:1 there should be clear questions we are trying to answer during the meeting.
• No Sidebars — please don’t have side conversations during a meeting.
• No Laptops / Phones. Unless you’re presenting please leave your laptop/phone behind. Please initiate “out of office hours” on our website during an all-hands meeting.
• Participate or excuse yourself — if you’re not adding value or could spend your time better please politely excuse yourself from the meeting. One exception, all-hands meetings.

This was the topic of episode #51 of our podcast. You can catch the full conversation by subscribing to Seeking Wisdom on iTunes or listen below right here:

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