This Could’ve Been an Email… But Should It Have Been?

Let’s be honest: meetings have a reputation for being soul-sucking time vacuums. Especially in remote teams, where every “check in call/strategy session/huddle/debrief/team sync” somehow turns into a 60-minute journey through existential dread, frozen Zoom faces, and “you’re on mute” a few dozen times.

But meetings can be a good thing. Productive, even. They can align your team, move the needle, and keep everyone rowing in the same direction.

Or…

They can derail your day, your focus, and your will to live.

So when do meetings actually serve your business—and when are they just performance productivity theater? ⬇️

What Meetings Should Be Doing

Meetings aren’t inherently evil. When done well, they’re a HUGE power move.

Here’s what they’re supposed to accomplish:

✅ Align your team and clarify expectations

✅ Move projects forward with decisions or approvals

✅ Troubleshoot roadblocks in real time

✅ Build team connection, especially for remote teams

Example: A 30-minute meeting that replaces 17 Slack messages, 3 emails, and 2 “just checking in” texts. Beautiful.

Meetings can be magic—when they have a point.

When a Meeting is a Bad Idea (aka Calendar Bloat)

Here’s what they’re not supposed to be:

❌ A status update that could live in a shared doc (we love a Google Doc)

❌ A standing “catch-up” just because it’s Monday

❌ A vibe check with no clear goal, agenda, or action

❌ A time-filler for people who don’t want to write things down

❌ A confusing, meandering chat that ends in zero clarity

❌ Rehashing the same info from the last meeting because nothing was moved forward

❌ A pre-meeting for the actual meeting to figure out the scope of the actual meeting….just, no.

If no one walks out (or logs off) knowing what just happened or what’s next, you didn’t have a meeting. You had a group thought spiral.

Don’t schedule meetings out of habit—that’s just a waste of your limited time.

Remote Teams & Culture: Why Some Face Time Matters

We’re big fans of efficiency—but we’re not robots. Remote teams do need connection.

The right meetings can build trust, reduce silos, and keep people from slowly floating off into the remote work abyss.

A weekly meeting to maintain rhythm and transparency? Great.

One-on-ones with direct reports? Absolutely.

But don’t confuse connection with chaos. We don’t need an hour-long Monday morning kumbaya just to feel “together.”

Behind-the-scenes: We have a standing meeting every Tuesday at 10am EST at Boss Co. We have a shared doc where we all write in our client and company updates. Our amazing ops manager has a fun prompt for us that we all share on for 10 minutes before we start on updates. It allows us to get that “around the water cooler” connection without wasting time that could’ve been used to get a project done, walk the dog, or take a nap (yes, we encourage that). Then we go into any relevant company updates, upcoming time off, etc. The reason we talk about time off, even though everyone can see it on the calendar, is so that we don’t have any gaps. We all know what’s going on and our clients are taken care of. Since our updates are written down, everyone knows the high-end view of everything without having to waste time going through it all. If there are questions or troubleshooting that needs to be done, we utilize the meeting for that purpose. Sometimes we use the time to do team trainings. Sometimes we end the meeting early (even if it’s only 10:20am). Sometimes we co-work until the hour is up. Just because the meeting is scheduled for an hour, it doesn’t mean we have to use the entirety of that time block. If all of our action times have been handled, we’re done! Meetings should be measured in tasks accomplished, not time allotted.

Yes to team connection—no to mandatory Monday marathons.

How to Run a Meeting That Doesn’t Suck

If you’re going to meet, make it count.

Here’s how:

• Start with a purpose: What do we need to decide, clarify, or move forward?

• Timebox it: Start on time. End on time. Actually honor your calendar. (Or if you’re done before the meeting end time, end it early! It’s the equivalent in finding $20 in your coat from last winter.

• Invite only the right people: If they don’t need to be there, they don’t need to be there. If they only need an update, they just need an email or Slack message once the update is ready.

• Assign action items: With names and due dates. Otherwise… what was the point?

• Consider alternatives: Recorded Looms, shared docs, dashboards, comments.

A good meeting makes things happen. A bad one just fills time, which costs you money.

Boss Co’s Rules of Thumb: Do We Really Need a Meeting?

Ask yourself these questions before you send that invite:

• Would a quick email or Slack message cover this?

• Is this a decision-making convo or just an FYI?

• Will this meeting actually remove a roadblock or move something forward?

• Are we meeting because we need to—or because we feel weird not meeting?

If your meeting invites are just “checking in,” try checking out of that mindset.

You don’t need more meetings—you need better ones.

Cut the calendar clutter. Protect your team’s time and capacity (and sanity). And when you do meet, make it meaningful.

Need help fixing your ops before your next standing meeting puts everyone to sleep?

That’s kind of our thing. Let’s talk!