Instead of separate catch-ups, use 10 minutes at the end of key meetings for meta-learning:

“What worked well in how we worked today?”

“What would we do differently next time?”

That small reflection replaces the need for a separate team development session or lots of 1:1s and builds maturity organically and collectively.

If you were meeting for an hour every week, switch it up to 30minutes one week one week and alternative with the full hour the next.

Use one for depth and the other for breadth. This creates variety and more intentionality and also makes space for both important contents.

Early teams often over-meet because they mix both in one space. Separating them trims time but improves focus everyone still gets the learning they need, just more intentionally.

It also keeps the frequency of meeting but allows you to reduce the duration.

There are lots of different types of conversations that a team will need and scaffolds (light structures that make it easy and fast to contribute) that will help speed up each of them.

For example, you could try:

- Rounds where everyone contributes their thoughts on a specific question in turn, with some kind of constraint e.g. one sentence, one minute.

- Parallel writing where people contribute at the same time via writing e.g. adding to a document or a whiteboard.

- Meeting questions where you break the meeting into specific questions which guide the group through a process and focus the conversation.

One of the best ways to mature your team out of 'parent / child' dynamic is to share out the ownership of meetings. This is a proxy for sharing ownership more generally across the team and it helps people think on behalf of 'we' rather than simply as 'me.

Rotate ownership, rather than 'chairing' (a word I hate anyway!). This means it's their job to curate the meeting, possibly within a framework and to be responsible for how people show up within it. 

This technique is unlikely to reduce overall meeting load in the first instance but it paves the way for it in the future.

Any recurring meeting automatically expires after 60 days unless the team re-endorses its value and purpose.

At renewal, ask:

“Is this meeting still doing a job for us?”

“If yes, what’s the measurable outcome?”

“If no, what could replace it?”

Early-stage teams can outgrow meetings fast and regularly checking in on meetings can help de-bloat calendars.

In more mature teams you can keep the rhythm but lose the meeting.

Instead of a weekly project meeting, create a ritualised async check-in. Everyone posts their update in a shared doc or chat channel at the same time each week, using a simple scaffold (e.g. Progress / Risk / Ask).

The ritual keeps connection alive; the autonomy grows because no one’s waiting for the meeting to move work forward.

If you want to try this in stages, try a 'shadow meeting' experiment:

Choose one recurring meeting and cancel it for a month but keep a shared doc or chat thread where people would have raised the same topics.

Review after four weeks: what naturally surfaced anyway? What truly needed live discussion?

It’s an elegant experiment that reveals which meetings are redundant without declaring war on them.

Record short 2-minute Loom videos or bullet point recaps after key meetings in smaller groups explaining why a decision was made, not just what was decided.

This means the rest of the team (and others outside the team) absorb context and reasoning asynchronously, so they are clear and aligned, and trust is maintained.

Empowered teams don’t need to debate everything live.

Give them a shared Decision Consult place (Notion, Miro, wherever) where any team member can propose a decision with:

1. The context

2. The recommendation

3. The deadline for objections

Unless someone challenges it by that date, it’s approved.

This shifts from synchronous agreement to silent consensus and it's a step along the way to 'pre-approval', a devolved management technique used my companies like Happy Limited.

Use lightweight visual boards or progress snapshots so the state of play is clear at a glance.

When work is visibly trackable, people no longer need meetings to stay aligned.

Example: a shared “Flow Board” showing what’s in play, what’s stuck, what’s done,  reviewed async with comments.

Block two predictable hours a week (e.g. Tue 2 –4 pm) where you're available but not in meetings.

Anyone can book a quick 10-minute slot for input but only if it replaces a longer meeting.
It models accessibility without over-scheduling, and teaches teams that access doesn't need to equal a meeting.

It also positions you in the role of coach, not 'organiser in chief'.

Ask people to clarify at the start of the call whether they want you to coach or advise, and the specific question they want to explore with you in that slot.

Create a shared “source of truth” board (Notion, Miro, Jira, Monday, doesn’t matter) that shows each team’s top 3 priorities, dependencies, and blockers.

Anyone can see what others are working on without meeting to ask.

Once that exists, cancel half the cross-team status meetings: the information lives where everyone can find it.

Instead of five people from each team joining the same sync, nominate one rotating “connector” per team.

They attend, capture decisions in a common doc and bring back only what’s relevant.

Everyone else gets the digest and the diary time back.

Many cross-team meetings happen because goals and timelines drift apart.

Fix it by scheduling quarterly alignment sprints i.e. a few hours of joint planning every 6–8 weeks.

Front-load the shared planning to free up endless alignment cycles later on.

Instead of review meetings, circulate proposals, drafts, or plans in writing.

Give everyone 48 hours to comment asynchronously using a simple scaffold (e.g. I like / I wish / I wonder).

If no major issues arise, decisions stand. Only escalate to a live meeting if needed. 

Using the language of "comment window" can become a new norm in the organisation - everyone knows what that means and how to use it.

Pick one week each quarter where no recurring cross-team meetings run.

Everyone documents what they missed (if anything) and what still flowed fine. Usually, 30–40% of cross-team meetings never return.

It’s a safe, data-driven way to prove which inter-team meetings are truly essential.

And even if you keep them all, you get a week every quarter with a dramatically reduced meeting load.