Breaking down the busy leader philosophy : A take on Meetings
A culture of busyness among leaders is endemic in modern workplaces. A look into what is causing the endless cycle of busyness and ways to get out of it for the better
I see a growing cadre of leaders who wear “overloaded calendar” as medal of honor. Countless meetings fighting for attention for a leader, and a constant sifting through the noise of meetings is a common occurrence for leaders these days. The meeting buzz often masks a deeper issue at the heart of effective leadership : “Are meetings the sole way leaders drive success in an organization ?”.
Calendars that are stuffed edge-to-edge can signal two things:
A lack of understanding of what truly moves the needle, essentially how to prioritize your time to what matters most
Frenetic activity and a busy schedule is accepted as proof of work and worth, while idle hour is seen with suspicion, even shameful to the individual
Over time, we tend to teach leaders the same repeating lesson : be busy or risk looking disengaged.
Trapped in the vicious cycle
A fully booked week breeds fatigue and that results in ineffective meetings leading to more of that “meeting theatre”. When the cost is meeting is invisible, scheduling meetings is seen as a cheap resort. Ineffective meetings breed further ineffective moments, each with deteriorating levels of attention. A vicious cycle emerges over time as if you are in the middle of addiction.
A quick day off or a long weekend sounds like only respite from this “always on” mode. Unfortunately, this short respite is framed as “you deserve this break” or “come back recharged” as if the break is the necessary over-the-counter-pill to counter the busyness addiction, while the addiction being necessary part of the modern workplace. The leaders are expected to come back refreshed only to crank the wheel faster.
How many of you felt it in the first few days of coming back from a break to realize the break was long forgotten dream ?
Further, the days away from work have now a high bar to meet - doing something that serves the purpose of the break and to come back refreshed, anything less than that leads to dissatisfaction further destroying the clear spirit of time being away from the work.
Championship of Busyness
The intrinsic nature of modern workplaces often celebrates busyness. Finding time to speak to someone is seen as a transactional exercise, often loaded with meeting notes (now automated), an agenda dance and a follow up promise. The agenda dance is a complicated exercise, sometimes futile in nature : You think about what you really want to achieve from a meeting, be clear about it and believe that the application of Parkinson’s law will somehow you to be successful in getting through your agenda; But you realize you don’t have everyone in the meeting to go over the agenda and worse the meeting was a one way affair with a single person (likely you) talking to the participants rather than a discussion, leading to more follow up meetings. This agenda dance has become part and parcel of modern work environments. A successful meeting is thus part of an overall championship with leaderboard from great to worse meetings.
On the other side, finding a slot to have everyone together in the same room is an exercise that requires a full time job (aka assistants to senior executives). People being busy often is given as the excuse of not talking about things that really matter at the time when it should be. Easy availability of people is seen as a surprise, almost a coincidence, that happens rarely and thus is seen with suspicion.
Tackling the vicious cycle and the championship head on
What can you as a leader do when you recognize you and your organization is in the vicious cycle and there is a looming championship of busyness where people compete with each other on how each is busier than the other.
There are few models teams and organizations apply with a varied amount of success and failure. The Shopify model of periodic deletion of meetings is a top-down approach to prevent meetings on certain days and with a certain size of group. It takes an almost authoritarian view on establishing that meetings are bad, and meeting is a failed byproduct and not a vehicle of getting work done in the organization. I relate to this model to more of fighting the messenger rather than the source of the problem. Meetings are essential forums utilizing a costly resource—time spent live by individuals (people live on video or audio or in-person talking through things in real time in a constraint amount of space and time). A meeting is then essentially a tool in a toolbox that individuals may use to accomplish what they need to. Over use of the tool is not a subjugation of the tool, but rather on the system and politics of the environment that encourages the over use.
Further, meetings sometimes are seen as an efficient and low-cost mechanism to get things done, especially when things are time sensitive and a slow back and forth asynchronous model of collaboration on a problem is not the efficient alternative. This is where the heart of the issue lies - understanding the time sensitivity and appropriateness of a meeting, one of the biggest contributor to the busy leader’s life. I heard something in an organization I worked a while ago - “As leaders, we are paid to think and take action, and not have constant meetings”. This resonated with me a lot, even though I have myself found it hard to apply this constantly in my recent endeavors. It speaks to the fundamental gap that I see leaders can take actions about - creating time to think and take action, and letting meetings fill that need - thinking and taking action.
Thinking, Acting and raising the bar
A “thinking meeting” could be a meeting with yourself where its just you as a leader thinking through a problem either by reading, writing or through a scheduled well-planned catch up with expert(s). This “thinking” mode in the form of a meeting is still a meeting is visible on your calendar and is planned. Sometimes the thinking meeting can be a discussion between a small group, or in some cases an “organized and well-facilitated” brainstorming without the immediate purpose to close the thinking process. This is because the thinking is not over once the conversation in a meeting is complete, but after the reflection and digestion of the matter.
An “action meeting” is another of those well purposed meeting where the intention is to take actions. This action can be a meeting with yourself as a leader, or with a group of people especially if the “Action” needs to be explained through a discussion. The Action could be a working session with another individual aimed to “act” and deliver the outcome intended. Often the Thinking meeting precedes the Action meeting.
A calendar representing the Thinking and Action meetings is a better alternative, aimed at “representing” the nature of the work by leaders and is targeted to a relevant activity.
Lastly, raising the bar for meetings as they are expensive, sensible for time-sensitive topics and not seen as the only resort to getting things done - enables a fair representation of the concept of meeting. A busy leader is therefore not busy as a whole, but is sometimes busy with thinking and sometimes with acting on a periodic basis. Suddenly, the championship model of busyness is diluted rightfully, because a generic one-purpose-fits-all schedule is not a sure shot way for creating impact and is not the criteria for visibility. The hard part of this model is educating your teams and other leaders to adopt the model, and sustaining requires a deliberate honest view of the culture of busyness in the organization - which sadly kills the productivity of leaders who matter the most.
If you liked this, please share it further with your friends and colleagues. I also run a Leadership Bootcamp on Maven, a 6 hours cohort spread over the weekend, and the next one is around the corner. Sign up for the next bootcamp is now available and I am offering a 25% limited discount : maven.com/vivekjuneja/inyourshoes?promoCode=APRILLIGHT 🚀