I usually have a point of view about the things I write about. I’m not so sure about this topic. There seems to be an interesting concept gaining steam in the United States, actually around the world.
The concept is No Meeting Fridays. That means all business meetings are held on Monday thru Thursday. No exceptions. Not even lunch meetings on Friday. No Zoom meetings, no one on ones, no performance reviews, no conference calls. No meetings means no meetings. Period.
No meeting Fridays is about full “getting it done” productivity. No presentations to sit through, no PowerPoint to stare at. It’s about accomplishing as much as possible to finish the week exceptionally strong.
One of the immediate benefits to this that I see is an opportunity to turn off the “always on” mentality that comes with the typical business meeting environment. There’s no need to look a certain way or sound a certain way, no need to fight to be noticed.
I like that part of No Meeting Fridays.
I’m not sure it’s practical. It is a fact that an awful lot of business meetings are unproductive, no matter the day of the week. If you’re working someplace that has a good meeting strategy, one that requires agendas and objectives for meetings, then your meetings will be productive. If your company carefully considers who should be in meetings, so no unnecessary participants are included, then your meetings will be even more productive. Even on Fridays.
If your company is a “let’s get a meeting on the calendar” with a Willy Nilly approach to meetings then you would be better off having a No Meeting On Any Day that Ends in “Y” policy.
So what do you think about No Meeting Fridays? The idea has merit so long as people have the discipline to actually make use of the “meeting free” time to get stuff done. If it’s only a day to coast into the weekend then I’d be dead set against it.
What about you?
On a completely different subject…I’m trying something new out over on Twitter. It’s called “Super Followers.” For $5 a month, that’s 17 cents a day, people can follow a part of my Twitter stream that is for subscribers only. It features short videos of me discussing the kind of things I tweet and blog about. But the best part is I’m assuming there will be far fewer Super Followers than regular followers. That will give me the opportunity to answer questions more throughly than I can on regular Twitter. Most of the answers will come in the evening cause we all have day jobs, right? Think of it as ”mentoring on demand!”
You can find more information by clicking the Super Follow button on my Twitter profile page IN THE TWITTER APP. http://twitter.com/leadtoday Give it a try if you’re so inclined, I can’t promise it will last for a long time but I can promise the content will be helpful as long as it does.
Steve,
There used to be a belief that it was better not to buy a car that was made on a Friday or a Monday. We can infer why that may have been the case. In today’s robotic car manufacturing, that may no longer be a concern. I think I know why everyone makes such a big deal about the weekend, meaning Saturday and Sunday with TGIF being repeated with a sigh of relief. I don’t think I heard anyone say TGINF, thank got it’s not Friday. There’s all of that and my view that Monday is not the first day of the week, yes perhaps the work week for many people but on my calendar, the first day of the week is Sunday, and not necessarily for religious reasons although that works too.
No meetings on Friday? I understand that would free a lot of people up for a longer weekend, the fabulous three-day weekend and if you throw Monday in there too, why not have a four-day weekend and just work 3 days? I often thought that a balanced life would be 3.5 days working and 3.5 days playing.
Thanks for Lead Today, maybe evolving into Lead Today but not Friday?
Gary
Gary Gruber, Ph.D. 2221 E. Frontage Rd, Suite # F101 PO Box 4926 Tubac, AZ 85646
505-795-4329
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The whole Friday question is interesting to me. There are now companies going to a four day work week. One of their reasons for doing so is that so many people “coasted” on Friday anyway. So…what makes them think that Thursday won’t become the new day to coast? I actually think the day of the week doesn’t matter, people who are motivated to give their best effort will do so, regardless of what day it is.
Hi there,
I’ve noticed that No Meeting Fridays is an outgrowth from the voluminous number of meetings that occur on the other 4 days. I understand that some people and organizations coast on Fridays, but I’ve noticed that having one day fully blocked off allows people to catch up on their work that they missed out doing during the unproductive meetings throughout the week. They need that time to focus or perform the tasks that were put off during the week. Most meetings aren’t “the job” that we signed up for. No Meeting Fridays is a solution to a problem that we’ve created–too many meetings.
This, in a round-about way, requires that leaders permit their people to say “no” to meetings. And the leaders themselves should also say no (and not feel bad about it) when they need to do something else. We don’t empower our staff to say no when their time is better used working on the job, rather than collaborating or talking about the tasks at hand. And we as supervisors often bring people into meetings as inclusion and transparency; and though this is good, its not productive when our staff feel obligated to attend when they could be doing something else. We need to check this balance in the new, post-COVID remote work world. We should ask ourselves: “Does Sally need to be there or have I given the impression that I expect her to be there (although her time is better spent somewhere else)?” Very few employee will push back on this, and its up to a true leader to mitigate the flood of meetings.
Aaron
All excellent points Aaron. Someone has to stop the meeting craziness. It falls on leadership to do that but many leaders also take the path of least resistance and just keep doing things the way they have always been done. I think No Meetings Fridays are a good start so long as they truly are used to focus and attack tasks that didn’t get done earlier in the week.