It's a common refrain heard in offices around the world that meetings are just a waste of time. Seems like a tech company understood this concern and decided to help employees start the new year with emptier calendars. According to a CNN report, Canadian e-commerce company Shopify has announced to cancel all recurring meetings involving more than two people 'in perpetuity'. Not only that, but the company also reinstated a rule saying no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays.
According to a company memo sent to employees, which was provided to CNN, the guidelines stated that big meetings with more than 50 people can only be held during a six-hour window on Thursdays. Employees will also be encouraged to decline other meetings and remove themselves from large internal chat groups.
Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian said that the decision to cancel all meetings was taken to free up employee time. "To start 2023, we're cancelling all Shopify meetings with more than two people. Let's give people back their maker time. Companies are for builders. Not managers," Mr Nejatian tweeted. He further said employees should “be really critical” about which meetings to schedule.
The changes to Shopify's operating structure will eliminate 10,000 company events or the equivalent of more than 76,500 hours of meetings, a company spokesperson told Fortune.
"The best thing founders can do is subtraction,” Chief Executive Officer Tobi Lutke, who co-founded the company, said in an emailed statement, according to Bloomberg. “It's much easier to add things than to remove things. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with that period of time. As people add things, the set of things that can be done becomes smaller. Then, you end up with more and more people just maintaining the status quo.”
