Sean Everett argues that frequent check-ins and calendar-driven meetings slow organizations down. The real problem is trust and anxiety, which push leaders to over-schedule. He advocates for quiet, focused work and suggests evaluating whether each meeting actually accelerates work or just soothes organizational worry.
Ah, the infamous check-in. It really comes down to trust, right? Do I trust that you, your team, everybody involved is doing their part? Or am I anxious about not knowing what's going on, not trusting that they're going to get a thing done in the right amount of time, not going to be able to deliver? And so I need to schedule that check-in, right? Because I don't trust. But here's the thing. The more check-ins you have, the more calls you have, the slower you go because you're not producing any meaningful work that the market cares about. All you're doing is allaying that anxiety inside yourself or your company. So over time, as everybody starts creating calls and scheduling them on someone else's calendar, Which is like the weirdest thing in corporate America. Like, I'm just gonna pop time on your calendar and take over your time? That's so invasive. I don't like it. So, here's the thought experiment. If you're gonna schedule that call and pop it on someone's calendar, does the time that you're using— are your competitors doing that same thing? Or are they using that time to beat you? So, is that time accretive in helping you accelerate something or is it not? Because it seems to me the muscle memory of business these days is that anytime there's a question, something unknown, some unclear decision authority, or just general anxiety, the first thing is we just schedule a conference call. And I'm not here for that. I've been in situations in organizations where Quiet work time was the norm and we only had a couple calls every week. And guess what? We moved so fast with a tiny team that we were running circles around other people. So yeah, I think the next time you want to schedule that call or that check-in, just do a simple thought experiment. Are your competitors doing the same thing? Does it help you move faster? Or is it just addressing some— Organizational structure or anxiety that hasn't been dealt with, in which case you need to deal with that first, develop the fundamental and underlying infrastructure for your business, and then start operating at speed. All right, that's it. Have a great day.
