Recurring Meetings Are Immortal
Nothing on a corporate calendar dies of natural causes. The weekly sync created for a two-month project greets its third anniversary with nobody able to say what it decides. A daily standup born in a crisis outlives the crisis by years. Meetings cannot resign; they can only be audited — and almost nobody audits them, because the person with the power to cancel is usually the person who scheduled it.
This instrument is the audit. Run quarterly, per series, it puts each recurring meeting on trial with a simple charge: justify the hours you consume.
Running the Trial
Once a quarter, every regular attendee of a recurring series receives the same short questionnaire — ten questions, three minutes, sent by the meeting’s organizer or a neutral coordinator. Timing matters: ask about the last month of instances, not one memorable session, so the verdict reflects the series rather than a single week.
The opinion scale question carries the quantitative weight, and a yes/no battery handles the factual checks.
The Charges, Question by Question
- Value for time. Looking back at the last month of these meetings: worth the hours, or not? One scale, one honest average.
- The email test. Could the last three editions have been replaced by a written update without losing anything? This single question kills more zombie meetings than any workshop on meeting hygiene.
- Decision rate. A multiple choice: how often does the meeting end with clear decisions and owners — every time, most times, rarely, or can anyone remember?
- Attendance necessity. Who genuinely needs to be there for it to work? The answers routinely reveal an invite list running double the required headcount.
- Length honesty. Does the content fill the slot, or does the slot stretch the content? Recurring meetings inherit their duration from tradition, not arithmetic.
- The one fix. If this series continues, the single change that would most improve it.
Optionally, the boldest question in the set: would you oppose pausing this meeting for one month as an experiment? Silence, or consent, is more diagnostic than any rating.
The Verdict Framework
Results map to four outcomes. Consistently low value plus a failed email test: cancel or convert to async — and audit whether its slot simply migrates into another meeting. Decent value with bloated attendance: shrink the invite list and publish notes to the rest. High value but time complaints: shorten the slot and tighten the agenda. Everything middling: restructure one variable — cadence, length, or ownership — and re-audit next quarter.
The response archive holds each quarter’s verdicts, so improvement — or relapse — is visible across audits rather than asserted in them.
Anonymity Is the Price of Truth Here
When the meeting under trial is hosted by the department head, honest answers need cover. Identity stays optional; the series tag rides along in the link without naming anyone; results go to the team, not the host, first. Teams that skip this step collect flattery and call it data. The broader connection between meeting culture and how people feel about their work is the territory of employee engagement measurement — the audit is where that culture gets actually inspected.
Frequently Asked Questions
Won't hosts punish the people behind critical answers?
The design prevents it: no names collected, aggregate results only, and a stated review window before anyone discusses findings. A host who hunts critics through an anonymous audit is a bigger finding than the audit itself.
The executive loves a meeting the team scores poorly. Now what?
Present the numbers with the framework, not the verdict: the decision rate and the email test are hard to argue with, and the compromise — shorter, fewer attendees, agenda-first — usually satisfies both sides.
Audit one series or all of them at once?
Start with the three longest-running series on the calendar. Auditing everything simultaneously turns a working instrument into a political event.
What if every series scores middling?
Then the finding is systemic — too many meetings, too little decision density — and the next audit should include the question nobody asked yet: which two series could merge into one.