Want your small business to go global? Rethink your meeting culture.

Taking your small business global is more within the realm of possibility now than ever before. Whether you want to bring a few international workers on board or you want to launch entire new teams in another country, you can do it faster than you might think.

But if you want to grow across time zones, you need to figure out how (and when) to have meetings. Otherwise, you could find your company as an example of how process killed progress.

We would know: At the beginning of 2020, Remote only had a dozen employees. Today, we have more than 1,500. So if you want to grow your small company into a global powerhouse, you need to get ahead of productivity vacuums before they get ahead of you.

What’s wrong with meetings?

Excessive meeting culture is stifling creativity, innovation, and productivity (and, ironically, collaboration). It can leave even the best performers frustrated, exhausted and anxious. Eventually, people start working toward the meetings instead of the goals the meetings allegedly further. That spells death for a small company with limited room for error.

With few employees, you can get away with a few meeting sins. As you grow, though, those sins become magnified. And as you grow internationally, you can quickly cause significant problems, like keeping team members online after hours.

It doesn’t need to be this way though. Leading with decisions, instead of constant discussions about making them but never getting anywhere, is possible. An action-based culture is more productive than a meeting heavy culture. 

Start like this: Cut out the noise 

As part of their Work in Progress newsletter, The Atlantic’s White-collar work is just meetings now feature cited a study from 2016, where a small research group concluded that the prevalence of work meetings had doubled since 1990. Moving on to Harvard Business Review’s take on the data, they pointed out that some people were so wrapped up in meetings all day, “actual work” had to wait until after work hours.

That was almost a decade ago, yet that feeling of having your workday eaten by back-to-back meetings, so much so that you don’t have any time to do anything, is alive and well. Maybe moreso, since virtual meetings (which are easier to book, join, and participate in from anywhere) became the norm. For middle managers and directors in charge of hosting meetings, many went to town on the “schedule” button in lieu of allowing their calendars to clear.

Have fewer meetings by default

Last year, research from Microsoft found that unproductive meetings were a major blocker to productivity, and up to 68% of workers said meetings left them without any work hours left to complete tasks without working overtime. This suggests an era of obsessive meeting culture since the 1990s that’s only getting worse, and in turn, sparking an unproductivity crisis. 

The first step to safeguarding your brand from pedaling backwards in this way is to simply cut the number of meetings in everyone’s calendar. You might think that every meeting in your company’s schedule is relevant and necessary right now, especially if you’re the one scheduling them. You’re probably wrong, and the odds are good that most of your meeting participants agree.

People want to take back time in their calendars that would be better spent getting the real work done. It’s not just about reducing the number of meetings, but also about making meetings shorter. Most meetings don’t need to be longer than half an hour, and engagement drops off after that point even if people still look like they’re taking information in.

Rethink the necessity of meetings

Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. Include key decision makers and those with relevant knowledge to help inform those decisions quickly. Beyond that, don’t include anyone else. Let them work, and provide the meeting recording (with helpful AI notes and summaries) so they can catch up on their own time.

Before you even think about sending out a meeting invite, stop and ask yourself a few questions: Could this be sorted out in an email or on a shared document? Is a meeting really the best way to achieve our goal? Does everyone need to be there, or can we just update them afterward? By critically evaluating the need for a meeting, you can cut down on unnecessary interruptions and free up more time for focused work.

Focus on clear, structured agendas

A meeting without a clear agenda is like a ship without a rudder: it will just drift along aimlessly. Set a clear purpose and agenda for each meeting, outline what needs to be covered, and set time limits and responsibilities for each agenda item. This keeps the meeting focused and efficient, preventing those side-tracks into irrelevance.

At Remote, our CEO Job van der Voort gives every employee permission to decline a meeting invitation without an agenda. Want people to show up? Give them something to show up for.

Establish a global mindset for communication

Cutting the number and length of meetings seems simple enough, but it can be daunting if this isn’t the way you’ve typically done things. Remember, you’re taking a step towards greater productivity, employee wellbeing, results, and an easier global expansion as far as integrating new, international employees goes. 

Prepping for international expansion

With fewer meetings to schedule, being inclusive of different time zones becomes easier. Think of it like you’re preparing your company to take off internationally, with more agility, innovative thinking, and faster processes than you have right now.

There isn’t one size that fits all here, so it’s essential to craft out an approach to meetings that works for your team and company goals. That said, you shouldn’t be so influenced by what’s been done before, how meeting culture typically plays out, or what the standard approach to this is. Be the shift you want to see in meeting culture.

How Remote flipped the script on meetings

Take us for example. When Preston Wickersham joined Remote on the marketing team, he was the first American employee in a team full of Europeans. He was one of the first at Remote who had to deal with a major time zone difference. Taking a proactive approach as a team, we realized that while a six-hour time difference could work for a while, it would not be sustainable as the company grew.

“We used to have a daily all-hands meeting at 10 a.m. my time, so 4 p.m. or so everyone else’s time,” says Preston. “As the company evolved, the daily meeting eventually stopped after we had around 40 to 50 people, and we went to a weekly meeting.”

That weekly meeting always happened at the same time. Individual teams (like the marketing department) had weekly meetings that were always at the same time too. As those teams grew, with new staff based across multiple time zones, they tried alternating times for meetings next.

“This looked like APAC and EMEA inclusive times one week, then EMEA and AMER inclusive times, followed by APAC and AMER timing next,” explains Preston. “Sometimes that worked, but with only one to two people in a specific time zone sometimes, it didn't always.”

Async work values autonomy over meetings 

At Remote, we lead with documentation over meetings for the sake of meetings. That’s not just better for time zones, but also for the increasing number of neurodivergent employees doing remote work. The scheduling of  live, virtual meetings, and quarterly in-person meet ups are left up to us to decide. We work async, and always have done so, which means our teams have the full flexibility to manage their own schedules without much mandatory live collaboration.

This works for us, attracting outstanding global talent and leaving us with the time to get the real work done and then switch off at the end of the work day.

“Remote started with async work as the default. Even in the beginning, meetings only happened where necessary,” explains Preston. “However, when startups are very small, regularly meeting with everyone at the same time is a great use of limited hours. Everyone needs to be on the same page all the time, and every person has an outsized influence on the direction the business is heading.”

Meeting culture evolves as you scale

Think about it like this: in a large organization with thousands of employees, the most impactful 20 people are probably all VPs or c-suite people, with maybe a couple of directors or principal-level individual contributors in the mix. 

When the entire company is 20 people, individual engineers, designers, product managers, and marketers have much more influence than they would holding a similar role at a bigger company. That's not to say everyone has an equal impact, of course. When a company is tiny, its success ultimately depends on the founders or CEO.

This is part of why here at Remote, we have far less meetings than we used to as a smaller startup. As for the meeting culture at Remote today, Preston points out, “Remote still has far fewer meetings on average for a company its size. Internal meetings are typically used either for social purposes, or to come to a specific decision with a clear agenda.”

H adds, “Our CEO actively encourages employees to exercise their autonomy by declining invitations to meetings without agendas attached. It's perfectly normal to host an async meeting, which is essentially a deadline by which everyone invited needs to contribute to a shared document, after which the meeting leader will review the feedback, ask follow-up questions, and communicate the results.”

Test async methods for yourself

“There's not a single answer” on how to definitively approach meetings, stresses Preston. “You have to figure out what works for your individual team.” 

Don’t be afraid to trial-and-error your way to the solution that fits your team best. Remote’s marketing department launched a fully async meeting month for August, meaning all internal real-time meetings were canceled.

This gave us a wide breadth to hit the ground running with long form projects and to dive deep into serious focus with detailed reports. There’s no clear mind like one that doesn’t have a meeting starting in five minutes — you’d be surprised how much faster and more effectively work can get done when the doing is the star of the show, not the “talking about doing.”

Of course, you can’t just get rid of meetings forever. That’s why the marketing team had an async month instead of eliminating meetings altogether. It’s important to know your colleagues’ faces, to have hard deadlines and conversations for big decisions, and to let creative juices flow in a give-and-take setting. You just don’t need to do it the same way all the time.

Why fewer meetings can save small businesses

Small businesses need to get things done to grow, and meetings make that harder. Fewer meetings, shorter meetings, and smaller meetings can all alleviate the problem. 

• Staff can get more done: Fewer meetings mean more time to write, program, code, manage, create, design, and innovate. Let your employees do what you hired them to do without zapping their energy and peak brain performance hours.

• Better collaboration everywhere: Worries around less face time, a lack of interaction, and a lack of talking to each other, and how this might impact collaboration, are valid. But, cutting out a meeting heavy culture actually leaves more room for holistic, effective, deeper collaboration with clearer action points and faster, better decision making.

• Better life-work balance: When your team has the space to work during work hours and play once work is done without feeling as if they have to spend their evenings in “always on” mode, they’re happier, more relaxed, fresh and full of ideas, more willing to try, and more likely to excel.

• Protecting against burnout for all teams: When you don’t pack your employees’ schedules full of back to back meetings, they work during work hours, not after work. Working all hours of the day with no personal time is a one way ticket to burnout, so removing the likelihood of this with less meetings pulls your employees away from falling into a cycle like this.

• Realistic use of working hours in all time zones: Cutting down on meetings gives workers more flexibility to structure their day in a way that maximizes their own productivity. None of us have unlimited time, and almost everything takes longer than we think.

Be a hero. Cancel a meeting.

Otter AI found that one third of meetings are “unnecessary” and can cost companies millions. Does your small business have millions it can afford to lose?

Meetings aren't inherently bad. They’re just an overused tool in most companies’ belts. At their best, they're vital for communication, collaboration, and decision-making. The trick is to reshape the culture around meetings, making them more about productivity and cutting out the ones that don't serve a purpose.

By rethinking how you approach meetings, you can make them more purposeful and efficient. Aim for fewer, shorter, and more focused meetings. Who knows? When you cut out the excess, people might actually be excited to accept your next invitation.