Auditing the meetings you have
Recurring meetings are created constantly and deleted almost never. The audit is the only mechanism that removes them.
Meetings accumulate by a ratchet. Each one is created for a reason that was real at the time, and no process exists for removing it when the reason expires. After two years the calendar describes the concerns of a team that no longer exists. For broader context on online meetings and collaboration, Microsoft Teams is a useful reference.
Count it properly first
Take the recurring meetings, multiply duration by attendees by frequency, and total the hours per month. Then price it at loaded cost.
The number is usually startling, and it is the only argument that reliably moves the conversation from preference to decision. A weekly hour with eight people is over four hundred hours a year. For a practical software-side reference on productivity versus efficiency in recurring work, this article adds useful detail.
A one-hour meeting with ten people is ten hours. Organisers experience it as one, which is why meetings grow attendees so easily.
Ask what happens if it stops
For each recurring meeting, the question is not whether it is useful — most are somewhat useful — but what would fail if it did not exist.
The honest answers cluster. Some meetings prevent a specific coordination failure. Some exist because a manager wants visibility, which is a reporting need with a very expensive solution. Some exist because they always have. Only the first group survives.
Distinguish the four types
- Decision — the group must reach a conclusion together. Genuinely synchronous, and usually short.
- Coordination — dependencies between people need aligning. Often replaceable with a written format.
- Information — one person tells others things. Almost always replaceable, and better in writing where it can be read at speed and referred back to.
- Relationship — the purpose is that people know each other. Real, valuable in distributed teams, and should be named as what it is rather than disguised as a work meeting.
The information category is where most of the recoverable time is, and it is the most defended, because being talked at feels like being kept informed.
Suspend rather than debate
Arguing about whether a meeting is needed produces a defence of the meeting. Cancelling it for three weeks produces evidence.
Announce a trial suspension, name what to watch for, and see what breaks. Most do not come back. Some do, immediately and obviously, which settles the question in the other direction and is equally useful.
Give every survivor an owner and a purpose line
Each remaining recurring meeting should have one named owner and a single sentence stating what it is for and what it produces. Written in the calendar invitation, where it is visible.
This makes the next audit trivial, and it quietly kills the meetings whose purpose nobody can articulate — which is a meaningful proportion of them.
Re-run it annually
The ratchet does not stop. Without a scheduled audit the calendar refills within a year, and the same conversation happens again from a worse starting position.