This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
Hi, I'm Nick, founder of 47 Skin.
You might be feeling like you've tried everything for your skin.
Growing up, I felt exactly the same way.
Then one day, my grandma sent me a small pot of cream.
And for the first time, my skin felt amazing.
It contained a unique ingredient called silver chitoderm.
This is something you won't have tried before.
That's why I started 47 Skin, to help people like me feel confident in their skin.
If you're feeling like I did, try 47 Skin today.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a longer one part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I am delighted to welcome Rebecca Hines to Before Breakfast.
Rebecca is the author of the new book Your Best Meeting Ever.
Seven Principles for Designing Meetings that Get Things Done.
So Rebecca, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Laura.
I'm excited you could be here and meetings is a good topic.
Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself first?
Sure.
So I've always been fascinated by organizational design, and how do you create organizations that are good for business and good for people?
And collaboration in particular is an area I've long been fascinated by.
Ever since I did my bachelor's, I went to Stanford and fell in love with organizational behavior design there.
I then did my master's in the same program and subsequently my PhD.
Currently, I lead the Work AI Institute at Glean, which is our internal think tank.
And previously I led the Work Innovation Lab at Asana, which was an internal research center, and have long been fascinated as well about translating academic type, rigorous research, into practical strategies and frameworks for executives and leaders and workers in general.
Yeah.
Well, meetings is an area that is definitely ripe for improvement, as I know, you know and hear all the time.
Like, what do most organizations get wrong with meetings?
Because it seems, like you know, we have to meet on occasion and yet many people are very, very unhappy with the way those things go.
Fundamentally, you know, we've accepted meetings, and in particular bad or dysfunctional meetings, as an inevitable cost of doing business.
And at the root of so much of the problem is the fact that we use meetings as a lazy, default knee jerk reaction for customers communication that doesn't deserve to be a meeting.
When we think about a meeting, it's in the premise of my book.
Your Best Meeting Ever is.
A meeting is a product right.
It's the most important product that you make as an organization.
It's where decisions get made, priorities get set, culture gets built.
And yet it's also the least optimized.
And considering how much time, how much effort, how much money we pour into meetings, the fact that we don't take the time to intentionally design them is both fascinating and deeply frustrating.
Yeah, because, I mean, first, there's the problem of volume.
I mean, I think you had some interesting numbers about the sheer volume, both overall volume and then the proportion of that that people feel is a waste of time.
It's massive.
And we've seen in particular over the last two decades, ever since the turn of the century, we've seen collaboration in general in our organizations increase.
We've seen the time we spend in meetings increase.
And I think what's especially fascinating is through the pandemic, and in particular between 2019 and 2024, we saw the time we spend in dysfunctional meetings increase, increased significantly across all levels of the organization.
And in theory it should have decreased because we had all these new digital tools that should have allowed us to spend less time in meetings and certainly less time in dysfunctional meetings.
But what we didn't have is a system lens.
Employees often didn't have clarity in terms of where to do the work.
And we know when there's a lack of clarity.
Again we default back to meetings, because They are the most reliable way to transmit information, although the most expensive one as well.
Yeah.
Well, that's one of the things driving the volume is that it's bad communication, right?
That's one of your main points.
Is that what goes wrong with communication that people are like no, I need to have a meeting?
Often meetings are used for information exchange.
And we see that in status updates.
We see that in broadcast briefings.
Even within specific meetings.
Often so much of the communication is information exchange that we know can not only be done more efficiently in asynchronous channels, but also more effectively.
And we need to get out of this habit of using meetings for those information exchange.
If they are this very expensive product, which they are, we should be using them very strategically.
It should only be used if we're making a decision, if we're discussing something that's complex, if we're deciding something.
You know if we're developing ourselves or our team.
All of these things require often synchronous, real-time back-and-forth collaboration in a way that information exchange does not.
Yeah.
So it's like something needs to change in the world as a result of this meeting taking place.
And many do not seem to actually clear that bar.
Yeah.
And it needs, you know, meetings.
There's a reason why your best meeting ever is a positive promise and not, you know, meetings suck.
Because I truly believe that you know, meetings are the highest leverage way that we can improve our ability to lead and our organizational performance.
And yet, you know, often they're not used for that very strategic purpose.
Well, let's start with the volume and how one might go about reducing the volume of meetings.
Maybe first you can talk sort of systematically and then we'll look at what individual people can do, like if you aren't in charge, to reduce your volume.
So often, when we think about volume in particular, and I compare it to technical debt, I call it meeting debt.
Just like in our products, we often have technical debt that builds up over time, shortcuts, fixes.
With meetings, the same thing happens in the form of often legacy meetings or meetings that are scheduled once, that drag on and become recurring meetings and don't ever get taken off the calendar.
And we don't think intentionally about that. is our calendar serving us right now?
And so often I'll work with organizations where the meeting debt is so bad, the meetings are so dysfunctional.
And often these were meetings that once had a strong purpose and were intentionally put on the calendar but no longer serve the work.
And in those cases, often what I'll recommend is a complete calendar reset.
I call it a meeting doomsday.
It's a 48-hour calendar cleanse, and it's designed very intentionally.
It's designed to put the ownership into the hands of employees.
Ideally it's done at a system level, an organizational level or a team level, but it's structured in a way that employees do the culling of the meetings.
They delete the meetings and then tips and tricks and strategies are given to them to decide which meetings to bring back on the calendar.
Every meeting needs to earn its place.
And that type of reset, you know, not only clears time and clears calendars, but it also, because it is a fresh slate, it starts to rewire our assumptions about what actually deserves to be a meeting.
And It also gives people explicit permission to decline meetings where we know that so much of that is psychological in terms of we fear canceling meetings because meetings are such a personal act.
It's a social contract.
When someone schedules a meeting with you, you feel obliged to reciprocate that invitation.
And doomsday these calendar resets.
If they're done intentionally, They give employees permission to decline meetings, delete meetings in a way that isn't taken personally by the organizer because it's an intentional, system-wide or team-wide effort.
Excellent.
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then I'll be back with Rebecca Hines talking about better meetings.
For years, petrol set the benchmark.
Hybrids cost more.
Efficiency paid extra.
Today, BYD reset the benchmark.
Electric intelligence costs less than petrol.
Advanced technology.
Real efficiency.
No compromises.
The BYD Sea Lion 5 DMI Super Hybrid SUV from just £2,995.
Find out more and book your test drive at bydcomuk.
Well, I am back talking with Rebecca Hines about how to have your best meeting ever, which is the title of her new book.
So, Rebecca, we've been talking about things we can do systematically.
And I know you've worked with a couple of organizations that have done a meetings doomsday, meeting Armageddon, as it were, a 48 hour cleanse to get rid of all these meetings on the calendar.
Let's say I don't work for one of those places and they have not brought you in as a consultant.
I am just feeling like I have a lot of meetings.
Is there something I can do to start changing that volume on my calendar?
Absolutely.
We are all co-designers of better meetings, and this is highly dependent on your role within the organization whether you're primarily a meeting organizer or a meeting attendee and the level of psychological safety within the organization.
But fundamentally, we all need to have a good understanding of what our priorities are at work.
And realistically, our priorities at work are what our calendar says they are.
And so often you know when I'm working with individuals or advising individuals.
The first step is look at your calendar and that's a reflection of your priorities.
Bucket the time you spend.
Often the majority is in meetings or some form of collaboration, bucket into different categories and then take a beat and look at okay, what are your priorities, as you wish they would be.
And how does that match up?
Because often what we'll see is you're spending disproportionately high time in meetings and less time on the really important work, the skilled work, the strategic work, the customer relationships, and seeing that mismatch is often a first step.
And then lots of other strategies in terms of, How do we protect our time?
I'm a big proponent of meeting blocks on our calendars and protecting those.
And then thinking very carefully about when we do organize a meeting.
I often look at four key dimensions.
So the length, the cadence, the attendees, and the agenda items.
And for each of those dimensions, there are lots of strategies that we can put in place to, even as an attendee, but especially as an organizer, in terms of redesigning the length, the cadence, the attendees and the agenda items to be more valuable for the people in the room.
Length is a classic example where we know meetings suffer from Parkinson's law, meaning work expands to fill the time allotted.
If you look at your calendar and most of your meetings are 30 minutes or 60 minutes, it's a sign that we've just accepted the calendar defaults and not thought intentionally about could that 30-minute meeting be a 25-minute meeting?
Could it be a 15-minute meeting?
All of these things add up in a way that can meaningfully improve our ability to hit our personal goals, have better work-life balance and boost our organizational performance as well.
So, I mean, with one of that, you mentioned in the book that maybe 10 hours was the tipping point.
I was going to give people.
If they're adding up their calendar, they're looking at what time I'm spending in meetings.
Is sort of 10 hours, what you might be aiming for, that or less, if you're not in a role that is like purely meeting-based.
It's on average.
So this is research that comes from a fantastic organization that I've interacted with and worked with over the years Worklytics.
And what they've essentially shown is for the meetings, they analyze...
A whole host of negative consequences tend to kick in once people exceed that 10 hour a week threshold.
Now, many, many people, most people are well above that threshold.
And so I often use it as a benchmark.
You know, what would happen if you did cut your meetings down to 10 hours?
Would things fundamentally change in terms of your ability and, in particular, hinder your ability to move, work forward and hit your objectives?
And it's a useful conversation.
It's a useful benchmark.
It's never one size fits all.
But I think you know having that 10 hour a week threshold and understanding that you know focus time engagement tends to dip once we get to that threshold, I think is a is a useful thought exercise.
And for some people, you know, very helpful in terms of a hard barrier.
And I've worked with many folks who will set that hard barrier in terms of I'm not going to have more than 10 hours a week in meetings because I recognize that my ability to perform in the meeting outside the meeting is negatively impacted.
And how would you recommend like having that conversation with a manager?
Like, let's say, I add up the meetings on my calendar and I'm at, like I don't know 25, 30 hours a week of meetings.
And I would like to be closer to the 10 hour number.
How do you start that conversation with the people who are managing your team or your organization?
It's always best to have objective data. in terms of what's working and what's not working.
And that's why these dedicated initiatives that I'll often lead or advise companies on where you're level setting in terms of what is an effective meeting right.
An effective meeting.
Your best meeting ever is a meeting where the attendees not yourself as an organizer leave Knowing that the time they've invested in that meeting has been well invested.
And so the more we can have data in terms of okay, I've asked attendees or I've rated these meetings and they're not effective, they're not serving me as an individual or the team the more you can then give that information to the team member, the organizer, the manager, and have that conversation.
In my experience, managers typically respond very well to this.
Certainly there are some meetings where we might not be getting as much value as we're contributing to the meeting.
And those in particular, we don't want to be taking off the calendar too quickly.
But having that conversation.
The big problem is many managers don't have this conversation with employees in terms of it's okay to walk out of a meeting where you're not contributing value or reaping it.
And it's likewise okay to have a conversation with the organizer if the meeting isn't worth your time.
If you're coming from a place of intentionality, people tend to respect that.
You also suggest asking sort of leading questions or curious sounding questions.
Like, if we're discussing this topic, will we have time to get to this thing on the agenda?
Is that a good strategy?
If you're operating in a psychologically unsafe environment, yes.
Because the more you can disarm the sense of threat that would be perceived by you calling out a bad meeting, the better your feedback or criticism disguised will be taking.
Now, if you're operating in a psychologically safe environment, you can afford to be more blunt and assertive.
We know that's going to be more efficient and move things forward much more effectively.
And calling out specifically, I don't think this meeting is effective for this reason.
I'm coming from a place of wanting the meeting to be better for everyone.
Again, the level of psychological safety really matters in terms of the best, most effective approach.
You talk about putting in little moments of joy to make people actually want to come to a meeting.
What can we do to make a meeting seem sort of fun?
I mean, a little bit like a party, I guess.
It's really important because if we're using meetings intentionally, we should have fewer meetings, which means the meetings that we have should be deeply human right.
That's the purpose of live.
Synchronous interaction is those things that we need our human empathy, our human body language, trust to develop.
And we've gotten into a situation where people have a visceral negative reaction to meetings.
You ask people, do you like meetings?
No one likes meetings.
You hear the grumbles right away.
And so I'm a big proponent of within all of our meetings.
As an organizer, you should be injecting at least one moment of delight.
It can be a five-second moment.
It can be a two-second moment.
It can be a minute moment.
But delight is this very interesting combination of joy and surprise.
And I think the surprise element is really important because it causes people to think differently and remember that moment that they weren't expecting.
So it can be a shout out.
You've done a good job on this.
The person wasn't expecting the shout out.
It can be you're bringing a food item that has cookies or cupcakes, that has some personal significance to you.
Something that will cause employees and the people in the room to have a lasting positive impression, because that will then make them want to show up the next time.
Engaged in the contributions and the content of the meeting.
Just to say here, I mean, it's probably not asking people for a fun fact, right?
I mean, is there a sort of another one that we could do for making a moment of delight?
Yes, I think, and we also you know, I've seen this this, you know negatively impact the meeting as well when we start to ask about weekend activities also, anything where you might have differences in terms of people's.
You know, work life balance.
You want to make sure you're level setting in terms of so that's why I love shout outs.
I love kudos, you know, everyone goes around and celebrate someone else.
We don't want to be doing this in every meeting, but we know that peer-to-peer recognition is also very effective and intrinsically motivating for so many people.
So that type of thing where you're level setting, you're ensuring you're not, you're including everyone and asking questions where everyone feels excited to contribute in some way.
Excellent.
We're going to take one more quick ad break and then I'll be back with more from Rebecca Hines.
Well, I am back talking with Rebecca Hines, who is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever.
So switching gears a little bit.
Rebecca, I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how you work.
Like, what does a day look like for you these days?
Sure.
So I try to structure my meetings very intentionally.
So I try – I mentioned the 4D CEO test in the book.
A meeting should only happen if fundamentally the purpose is to decide, debate, discuss, or develop.
And I'm pretty stringent in terms of that.
If I don't think that's the case, I'll ask for –
Or I'll ask, you know, what is my role in the meeting?
I'll often, you know, watch meetings asynchronously at 15 or 2 speed, when I know that I'm not contributing value in the meeting or reaping value from that live synchronous communication.
I try to bundle different types of tasks.
I think I'm in the phase of my career where I know how I work best and I know when I'm most creative.
I know when I need those deep focus blocks.
If I'm doing similar types of activities, I bundle those.
I don't have too many back-to-back meetings.
Non-negotiable for me is having you know some portion of every day where I'm at the gym and working out and being active.
Those are non-negotiables in terms of how I structure my time.
I'm curious, do you have a morning routine?
Yeah, absolutely. then I'll switch gears for the majority of the day.
And often I'll go back and catch up on book work at the end of the day.
It ebbs and flows throughout my career.
But I have learned in terms of that balance of physical activity taking time each day where I'm off the screen, even if it's for half an hour.
And sleep I try to be relatively consistent about in terms of I recognize how important that is in me being able to show up each day.
Absolutely.
So I always ask my guests what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
So I'm a huge New Year's resolution person.
And I use resolution lightly because they're more like goals for me.
I grew up as an athlete and I've always loved goal setting.
And that's been something that has given me a lot of stability and clarity and motivation through every phase of my life and career.
And so I love those three or four days before the start of the new year where I'm I'm tinkering at my New Year's resolutions, New Year's goals.
I usually have, you know, I usually have 12 or 16 each year, recognizing that you know if I hit 10, that'll be a success.
And have them be from different categories as well.
And I find you know that's already taken me from good to great in terms of how I'm approaching this year and the intentionality with which you know I'm spending my time and investing my time.
Can you share one of them?
Yeah.
I'm so superstitious.
Okay.
All right.
Then you don't have to.
I'll share.
So I always have, you know, there are two or three that are more physical activity related.
There are always two or three that are more family relationship oriented.
There are always two or three that are more family.
Work related, I'm still very active doing research and academic research.
So I build in a category for that.
And then also I do have you know one or two each year that are about that delight and joy and being happy and doing things that will make myself happy and others happy as well.
I'm a big believer in generosity and giving.
And so those are the sorts of categories that I think about each year.
Gotcha.
What are you looking forward to right now?
I'm looking forward to the book launch.
It's been so fun to work with organizations and help them fix their meeting dysfunctions.
Last week I was working with both a very large oil and gas company and a book publisher and a tech company.
And seeing the similarities but also the unique nuances of each industry and person has been so fun.
And shifting from the writing to the real practical, which I love to do as well.
Excellent.
And where can people find you?
So my book is everywhere, your favorite bookstore.
My website's rebeccaheinz.com and I'm active on LinkedIn as well.
Excellent.
Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback on this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura, at lauravandercamcom.
And in the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at LauraVanderkam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
