⏲️ “Can we make the meeting shorter?” is the wrong question to ask. Stop sabotaging your meetings using these four points. 🫵🏼

Rice fields of Ubud. © Marcin Konkel. All rights reserved.

If someone wants to shorten your meeting, whether it’s Sprint Retrospective, Town Hall or other, it’s likely not about how long it lasts. 👉🏼 What they are saying is the event is inefficient and the value delivered over time is unsatisfactory.

It’s a plague that needs a different approach. Here is why and how.

1. Quality conversations need time — half-day or whole-day meetings can be better than hour-and-a-half. If the goal requires answering complex questions or touching the uncomfortable — book time for it to reach surface instead of rushing it. It takes time to stop talking about what is superficial.
2. The agenda dictates length — not the other way around. Focus on how much time the topic might need, and ask the participants when building the schedule. Learn together to be more mindful of this aspect or take on less topics.
3. Use follow-ups as a last resort — it’s easy to bloat an agenda and follow up on the topics until eternity. An infamous record I’ve seen was an agenda with 35 cases to discuss in 45 minutes.
   There is a way to tackle such situations with strict moderation and Consent Decision Making from Sociocracy 3.0. yet it’s rarely being used.