Where do meetings come from? If all you have is a calendar, then everything looks like a meeting! We often think of work in two modes: Meeting Time and Focus Time. To be effective, we're told to block out time for these activities. But what if we took a step back and reimagined our workday as consisting of three distinct types of time: Meeting Time, Collaboration Time, and Focus Time?
Collaboration time is the natural flow of spontaneous, non-scheduled interactions that happen in an office environment. It's the time spent on small discussions, helping out a colleague, giving feedback, asking for advice, brainstorming, clarifying priorities, and solving problems. These interactions provide energy, inspiration, and a sense of accomplishment. Some of this work is urgent and important, requiring immediate attention rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting.
In our company, we have only two scheduled meetings a week: a status meeting at the beginning of the week and a weekly meeting with an external design firm. Everything else is flexible and happens in real-time, with just the right length and full transparency. We communicate frequently, fixing problems, discussing ideas, and following up on issues. We use AI to share summaries, when needed.
Fundamentally, meetings are about collaboration, sharing progress, and making transparent decisions, which are all good and necessary. But they also come with several issues:
- Slow to schedule: Meeting invites grow as you need to be transparent.
- Too big: It can be hard to get people together quickly, leading to a loss of urgency.
- Time-boxed: Meetings are often either too long or too short, lacking flexibility.
Meetings are often too easy to schedule by just putting them in everyone's calendar. We have all been taught better calendar management and meeting hygiene for years, yet the problem persists.
To cultivate togetherness and camaraderie at work without overwhelming our days with meetings, we need to rethink our approach. We already know how to do this physically through "Office Hours" or "Open Door Policies.", or simply co-working together in an open office. These concepts allow for spontaneous interactions and collaboration.
We need to bring "Collaboration Time" back into our vocabulary. It is the big, uninterrupted chunk of the week where you simply work closely with your team. This is also known as teamwork! This concept is challenging to implement virtually with current tools, but not impossible. In fact, with the right approach, it can be even more effective than the in-office equivalent.
Key aspects include:
- Presence: Knowing who is around and available.
- Context: Understanding what people are working on and with whom to determine the right time for a quick conversation.
- Conversation: Fostering a bias towards conversations.
By focusing on these elements, we can create a sense of community, involvement, and transparency, moving away from the transactional flow of most current tools.
Jamscape is based on a Virtual HQ model, centered around people who can communicate their context by selecting rooms. It breaks down barriers to collaboration, allowing for shared conversations and fostering a collaborative environment. Utilizing GenAI, Jamscape creates high-quality conversations and provides transparency through Q&A-style searching of information.
Let's rethink our calendar management and embrace collaboration time. Then we can cultivate a more connected and efficient work environment, reducing meeting pressure, and fostering real-time collaboration. Efficient teams are teams that collaborate well.
