Flipped meetings: Cut your meetings in half (without missing a thing)

Reduce meeting time, improve the quality of conversation

Meetings sit within an ecosystem of other collaboration tools. Change meetings, and you almost certainly need to change something else too.

And if you want fewer meetings you need to shift some work into lower-intensity formats, because meetings are full-on:

• 7 people
• 100% focused
• No choice over when or how to engage

Meetings burn through time and energy faster than anything else. Yet they dominate our workdays.

But when we move parts of meetings into async, we free up time, reduce pressure, and focus meetings on what truly requires real-time discussion.

Here’s what the typical collaboration mix looks like:

Now imagine flipping it so meetings are only used for crucial ‘live’ group work and everything else happens in smarter, lower-intensity ways.

Your mix may look different, but I guarantee you can win back time and energy by shifting just some of your meeting time into async.

Here are three simple ways to start.

 1. Async chat meetings

Can you move some meetings (or parts of meetings) to group chat?

You don’t all have to be online at the same time, but you set a window for input and then close the discussion.

For example:

• A Monday morning check-in
• A quick decision-making discussion where multiple people need input

Try interspersing async check-ins with real meetings. You don’t have to replace them entirely.

2. The scannable email

Meetings are a terrible way to broadcast information. I know, I know - we all want fewer emails. But hear me out.

A well signposted, scannable email can be a very time efficient way to gather key information (and go back to it later)

How to do this? Use:

• Scannable’ subheadings - so you can get the gist, just by reading the headings
• Just enough text to highlight what matters
• Calls to action that make the ask clear

Use email for:

• Key updates
• What people need to know or act on
• How they can help, or get help

3. The 5in5 pre-meeting video

We’ve all been there: a 45-minute meeting where someone talks through slides in excruciating detail - only for time to run out before the real discussion even starts.

The fix? Record a short video instead.

• 5 slides in 5 minutes (hence 5in5)
• People watch before the meeting
• The meeting is shorter and only focused on discussion

I use Loom.com (free for videos under 5 minutes). It forces concision, takes practice—but saves so much time.

Bonus: these videos can be shared more widely than a live meeting ever could. Over time, teams build up a library of useful content.

Try it, tweak it, make it work for you

New ways of working always feel weird until they feel normal. Try flipping just one part of a meeting into async and see what happens.

What will you try?