“What If the Best Meeting Was the One You Never Had?” How well-designed organizations make recurring meetings obsolete

There’s a pattern that I spotted during my recent projects: every coordination problem gets solved the same way: someone schedules a recurring sync. Within months, the calendar is full, flow is fragmented, and everyone is busy being in meetings instead of doing the work. That is what happened to me.

This talk starts with a confession. Responsible for the agile setup of a large-scale program, I kept finding myself in meetings that solved problems that shouldn’t exist. My gut told me something was wrong — and instead of accepting it, I started looking for solutions. Including one simple rule: no recurring meeting more than once every two weeks. The reaction was telling.

What followed was a deeper dive into async communication, ownership models, decision flow, and organizational clarity. Not as theory — but as a practitioner trying to answer one honest question: why do well-run teams still need this many meetings? Do we need sync meetings at all — or are they always a symptom of a lack of organizational clarity?

I don’t have a final answer yet. This talk is not a blueprint — it’s a work in progress. I’ll share what I’ve observed, what seems to work, and where I’m still uncertain. And I’m genuinely curious what you’ve seen in your organizations.

Come for the provocation. Stay for the conversation.