Attend fewer duplicate meetings
Datum: 2026-09-08 08:10
You may have recurring meetings where your presence is somewhat of a duplicate. I admit that might sound a bit disrespectful, but what I mean is meetings where your role is shared by other participants.
For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:
Several with the same role
Imagine, for example, that you are the team leader of one of the organization’s three teams of a certain type. Every week, you attend a larger meeting where all three team leaders are present, along with representatives from other functions.
Or, you are a developer, and from time to time, you and your closest developer colleagues are invited to a meeting where having the developer perspective is important.
In such meetings, your role might be to represent your function, share your expert perspective, or something similar.
Are all always needed?
The question is whether everyone in the same role needs to attend these meetings. Are you all indispensable at the same time, or could you take turns?
If you have too many meetings during the week, this is one you could have fewer of.
Rotating responsibility
If the three of you overlapping team leaders attended the meeting on a rotating schedule, you’d only need to go to every third meeting instead of every single one. Before the meeting, the two not attending could update the one who will participate with what’s needed, and then receive feedback afterward on what was discussed – either directly or indirectly through meeting notes or wherever the outcome of the meeting is documented, such as in your planning tool.
Do this
Do you recognize that you, too, have duplicate meetings? If so,
- Scan through your calendar and look for recurring meetings of this kind.
- Consider whether it would be possible to take turns attending instead.
• What would the attending person need to “bring” to the meeting from the rest of you?
• What would those who didn’t attend need as a follow-up afterward? - If you conclude that this could be a way to reduce your meeting load and have a less packed calendar, suggest to your colleagues that you try it out. If it’s a complete failure, you can always go back to the way things were.
One final note: Meetings are necessary and an important part of working together, so my goal is not to eliminate all meetings. But since most of the people I help say they spend more time in meetings than they’d like, I keep an eye out for solutions to that problem.
The day someone tells me they want more meetings during the day, I’ll definitely find a structure trick for that. But so far, that hasn’t happened.
Freer and more flexible
If you attend fewer duplicate meetings, you’ll have less booked time in your calendar – time you can spend doing what you promise to do in your meetings, for instance. When your time is freer, you can be more flexible about what you do and when, and respond more quickly to unexpected, urgent matters that require your involvement.
How do you do it?
Do you have an example of what a duplicate meeting is for you? Tell me about it. The team leader example came up in a structure training session recently, and I’d love to hear more.
(While we are on the subject of meetings, have you ever tried the counter-question that makes your meetings more efficient?)
You can get more!
If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.
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