Roman, a former COO, explains why meetings drain teams: no clear agenda, wrong people in the room, decisions that could be emails. He shares what changed when his company started requiring written agendas and cutting attendees to only those who needed to be there.
This is the one that hit me when I was the COO at oneingtonder Junk. I walked by a meeting room with glass walls everywhere, so there was no blinds. And I walked past this glass vault meeting room, and there's one of the women from hr, somebody in finance, somebody in ops, a marketing person, and the VP of it. I'm like, there's no possible reason that that group should be meeting. So I asked the VP of IT later. I'm like, roman, what was that meeting for? Oh, my God, it was such a waste of time. I'm like, why did you go? Our new HR had invited me, so I said yes. I'm like, what were you talking about? She wanted one person from each business area. And we were so busy in IT launching the next phase of the site that I showed up and we were talking about the Christmas party. And he goes, and I'm Jewish. Because there was no purpose, outcome, or agenda. And he'd never been trained on how to opt out of a meeting. Like, he shouldn't have been there. If he'd seen who the agenda was to talk about a Christmas party, he would have said, no, I'm not coming, and, no, I'm not even sending an IT person. Just tell me what's going on.
Flutterwave Former Global Head of Operations Awa Kone | When Growth Outruns Operations (Podcast 611)
