SHOPIFY’S WAR ON UNNECESSARY MEETINGS: Shopify CEO Jeff Hoffmeister has declared war on unproductive time employees spend in meetings, which is similar to the war on paper that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan declared several years ago. Since the beginning of the year, Shopify has embedded in everyone’s calendar app a meeting-expense calculator for any meeting involving three or more employees. The cost is determined by the estimated value of the time of those attending and the length of time of the meeting. The average 30-minute meeting with three people can cost anywhere from $700 to $2,100, if an executive is involved.
At the beginning of the year, Shopify implemented a “Chaos monkey” meeting policy, where employees were told to cancel all recurring meetings involving more than three people. Overnight, 12,000 meetings were cancelled and the company expects to cut 322,000 hours and 474,000 events because of its new policy. Five months into the program, the company says the average time an employee spends in meetings is down 14%. I bet this will be a topic at a few bank management meetings this week.
Shopify goes to war on meetings
By Thomas K. Brown,
SHOPIFY’S WAR ON UNNECESSARY MEETINGS: Shopify CEO Jeff Hoffmeister has declared war on unproductive time employees spend in meetings, which is similar to the war on paper that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan declared several years ago. Since the beginning of the year, Shopify has embedded in everyone’s calendar app a meeting-expense calculator for any meeting involving three or more employees. The cost is determined by the estimated value of the time of those attending and the length of time of the meeting. The average 30-minute meeting with three people can cost anywhere from $700 to $2,100, if an executive is involved.
At the beginning of the year, Shopify implemented a “Chaos monkey” meeting policy, where employees were told to cancel all recurring meetings involving more than three people. Overnight, 12,000 meetings were cancelled and the company expects to cut 322,000 hours and 474,000 events because of its new policy. Five months into the program, the company says the average time an employee spends in meetings is down 14%. I bet this will be a topic at a few bank management meetings this week.