How meetings make or break the bank

Hey Contrarians,

Around hour 3 of back-to-back Zoom calls, you start wondering if goat farming on a European hillside really sounds that bad.

A bad meeting is the worst. It’s mind-numbing. Soul-sucking. Makes everyone feel dumber. According to the data, it’s also insanely expensive.

While good meetings move teams forward, bad ones leave them lost.

Today’s newsletter is about how we spend our time, and it includes the actual playbook we use to chart our course at Contrarian Thinking…

Today in 10 minutes or less, you'll learn:

✔️ Lost time = lost $$$

✔️ The Compass Meeting Agenda

✔️ It’s about time

Lost time = lost $$$

They say time is money, and the data shows we spend way too much of it on meetings.

Researchers at Microsoft have found that the most active 25% of users on its apps spend around 8.8 hours a week in emails and 7.5 hours in meetings. In total, these users spend 57% of their time in work communication tools.

That’s f*cking insane, and many are starting to realize it.

Show me the money

Take Shopify, the Canadian multinational e-commerce giant. Thousands of employees. $66B company. A bunch of you probably use their tech.

In January, Shopify removed 12k regularly occurring meetings from internal calendars. That’s 322k hours of meetings.

Almost 37 years of cumulative time, but who’s counting?

On top of this, they introduced restrictions on creating any new meetings.

On top of that, employees recently coded a simple tool meant to discourage meetings even further: The Meeting Cost Calculator.

The tool integrates into Shopify’s calendars and uses meeting attendee count, salaries, length, and other measures to peg a dollar cost to any meeting.

A 30-minute corporate lingo bingo session with three employees? That’s $1.6k down the drain, so the thinking goes.

Is this all one big overcorrection? Maybe.

But maybe not.

Cutting unnecessary meetings could save $2M annually at companies with more than 100 employees, and more than $100M at those with more than 5k.

Plus, Shopify says it’s tracking to ship 18% more projects year-over-year.

The mental toll of meetings

Most of you probably tried to squash this memory, but Google searches for “Zoom happy hour” exploded when the pandemic began in 2020.

Searches for “Zoom fatigue” rose not long afterward, to absolutely no one’s surprise.

It’s easier than ever to meet, which is just as much a curse as it is a blessing.

When your days are filled with too many meetings, there’s little time left for focused work.

Imagine interrupting a great artist with 5 dull, half-hour periods randomly dispersed throughout their day.

Picasso would lose his sh*t.

Frequent, bad meetings can hurt creativity, steer teams off course, lead to burnout, and reduce job satisfaction.

The worst part? They snowball. One ineffective meeting can roll downhill into 10 more, and yada yada yada.

But while a bad meeting drains energy and stifles productivity, a well-orchestrated one aligns your team, charts paths toward goals, and sparks innovation.

Most importantly, good meetings don’t just save businesses money, they help make more of it.

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The Compass Meeting AgendA

Meetings are the compasses of our professional lives. They can point us toward success, or just as easily get us lost.

As someone who runs a mostly remote team, meetings are a necessary evil. But I have a framework to make regular weekly meetings suck less, and I’d love it if you stole it.

I call it the COMPASS because it keeps your team pointed north, and it has 7 parts:

1. The Compass

This is the CEO’s opener. The beginning of any meeting is the highest-value real estate, so make it count.

Like using a compass to find your way out of the woods, the direction of your first step can make a huge difference later on.

So come prepared with something that’ll have a lasting impact, or don’t come at all.

• Give an update that’s useful for everyone there.

• Review a company value and inspire the team to embody it.

• Highlight one significant metric to show where you’ve grown or need focus.

Whatever the case, determine your team’s north star for that moment, and take ‘em to the promised land.

2. Content Calendar & Events

We’re a media brand, so this is where team members report on upcoming content. But let me lay down the law…

We’re not here for a snooze-fest recitation of the monthly schedule.

My team knows if they start listing bullet points like a bot, they can expect a tomato to the face.

We organize meetings to surface the stuff that deserves the combined attention of twenty minds.

The stuff that needs pollination. That’s what this section is for.

3. Testimonials & Feedback

Every company should review what their customers are saying about them.

Good feedback is like a pep rally for the team and a reminder of their impact.

Bad feedback helps you identify gaps and hone your focus. Bringing it up in real time allows everyone to collaborate on solutions.

4. Issues & Ideas

These are issues and ideas brought up internally, not by customers. If you have a strong team, they think of ways to improve and grow. Give them the space to do it.

Anyone on my team will tell you I get annoyed when no one brings random issues to a meeting.

In my mind, it’s a waste of time not to.

Less fear of blame, more hashing out solutions in the bloody public square.

Collaboration is one of the most beautiful parts of meetings. Don’t stifle it.

5. Biz Unit Breakouts

I’ve got one rule for this section…

Leaders of your business units should only include info that’s relevant to everyone on the team.

You've only got X number of meetings with all these brains in one spot, so use them wisely.

It’s easy for each team leader to get caught up in their own weeds. But you have department meetings and 1:1s to address micro concerns.

This is your opportunity to get the entire team pointed north.

6. Resources & Links

This one’s simple. The idea is to have a small hub pointing toward any relevant or recurring links.

For us, it’s our KPI scorecard and our content and event calendars.

7. Meeting Summary

I want my team present during meetings, so we use a combo of people and AI to take notes and delegate action items afterward.

The key is accountability. The greatest ideas in the world mean nothing if they’re not put into action.

It’s about time

How you do anything is how you do everything.

That holds true for how we spend our time, and how we run meetings says a lot about how we run our teams, our companies, and our lives.

So if you’re going to meet with people, be intentional about it. Value each moment with others, in both senses of the word.

The Compass is the exact template I use to manage our meetings at Contrarian Thinking. It helps us stay organized and motivated.

Feel free to try it out for your meetings using this template.

It’s been a game-changer for mine.

Don’t be the cause, be the catalyst
​

- Codie
​

🤔 Speaking of meetings... Check out Google's Project Starline​

👩‍💻 BTW, Google turned 25 this week. Here's a breakdown by the numbers​

🤳 OpenAI plans to build the ‘iPhone of AI’, whatever that means...

🏡 Yikes: Americans saved $1.1T less than thought between 2017 and 2022

🥇 So apparently Costco is selling 1-ounce gold bars now?

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