Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

How to design meetings with purpose so they actually move work forward.

Meetings are a necessary part of work. But for many people, they’re also a major source of frustration. According to Rebecca Hinds, meetings don’t have to feel like a drain—better meetings start when we stop treating them as a default and start designing them with intention.

Hinds is the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: Seven Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, and a future-of-work expert who founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean. She argues that the problem isn’t meetings themselves, but the sheer number of poorly designed ones, and by being more thoughtful about what actually deserves synchronous time, teams can redesign how they communicate in the workplace “Meetings are the most important product in our entire organization, and yet they’re also the least optimized,” she says. “The first step is recognizing we need to be much more intentional about how we're designing meetings.”

In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Hinds and host Matt Abrahams discuss why meetings so often go wrong—and what it takes to make them work. Whether you’re leading a team, trying to protect focus time, or simply hoping to spend less of your week in calendar invites, Hinds offers practical frameworks for designing meetings with purpose so they become a tool people actually value.

To listen to the extended Deep Thinks version of this episode, please visit FasterSmarter.io/premium.

Episode Reference Links:
Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:11) - Why Meetings Feel Broken
  • (03:26) - The Default-To-Meeting Problem
  • (04:19) - Treat Meetings Like A Product
  • (05:39) - Meeting Doomsday Reset
  • (07:09) - The 4-DCEO Test
  • (09:12) - Designing Better Meetings
  • (10:34) - Creating a Meeting Agenda
  • (13:27) - Context And Meeting Fatigue
  • (14:35) - Memo-First Meetings
  • (16:40) - The Final Three Questions
  • (21:36) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Rebecca Hinds
Organizational Behavior Expert | Author | Consultant | Speaker

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.

Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: What if people actually
thanked you for the meetings you ran?

My name's Matt Abrahams and I
teach strategic communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I look forward to
speaking with Rebecca Hinds.

Rebecca's expertise is in the future of
work and how to help make work better.

She founded the Work Innovation Lab at
Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean.

Rebecca is the author of your Best
Meeting Ever: Seven Principles for

Designing Meetings That Get Things Done.

Welcome, Rebecca.

I'm super excited for our conversation.

This is a topic that's
really important to me.

Rebecca Hinds: Thanks so much, Matt.

I'm really looking forward
to the conversation.

Matt Abrahams: Shall we get started?

Rebecca Hinds: Let's do it.

Matt Abrahams: Awesome.

I wanna start by sharing a secret
about something that just happened.

I had a meeting cancel and I was thrilled.

I know I'm not alone.

I'd like to begin by level setting.

Why do people dislike meetings so
much and why are meetings so broken?

Rebecca Hinds: It's such a great question
because it's not so much that people hate

meetings, it's people hate bad meetings,
and we have too many bad meetings.

Often we love a good meeting, and there
are a few things that energize us and

inspire us more than a good meeting.

The problem is those are too
rare in so many organizations.

And so, we've developed what I call
a meeting suck reflex, where there's

this visceral reaction that we have
to the phrase meetings, the idea

of a meeting, going to a meeting.

And that's again, rooted in the
fact that we know bad is stronger

than good, negative emotions and
experiences have a much greater

impact on us than positive ones.

And because of this, there's this
aura of negativity around meetings.

And when you look at some of the
research, it's fascinating to see

that when people rate their meetings
in public, they tend to rate them

much more negatively than in private.

And that's because there's all
this social conditioning around

the idea of a meeting as negative.

Matt Abrahams: I, I know we're gonna talk
about things we can do to make meetings go

better, but I'm wondering if we just call
them something else, does that make us

feel a little better if we just say, Hey,
let's have a collab or a standup, instead

of actually using the word meeting?

Rebecca Hinds: Rooted in a lot
of this is this default reaction

we have to schedule meetings.

So it's a paradox, right?

Because we know they're inefficient,
we dread them on so many occasions,

and yet our knee jerk reaction
is to use them whenever we have a

problem, whenever we need alignment,
if we're unclear on next steps.

And so part of this is we're so
accustomed to using a meeting as a

communication tool, even when we have
other things called Slack or Asana that

often are much more efficient ways to
communicate, we default to the meeting.

And there are a whole host of
different psychological reasons

why we're so obsessed with using
meetings in our workplaces.

Matt Abrahams: In the consulting
work I do, one of the first things

I'll do is a communication audit of a
company, and the first place I go is,

what are the meetings you're having?

How many meetings?

Who's going to those meetings?

Because as you said, there's sort of
a default knee jerk reaction to fixing

any communication problem, and there are
certainly places where meetings make a

lot of sense, but people throw meetings
as like a bandaid to fix a bigger problem.

So let's solve it.

What are some ideas, top three
ideas, for example, that we

could use to improve meetings?

Rebecca Hinds: Sure.

So the premise of the book, Your Best
Meeting Ever, is the idea that we need

to be treating meetings as a product.

Meetings are the most important product
in our entire organization, and yet

they're also the least optimized.

And so the first step is recognizing
we need to be much more intentional

about how we're designing meetings.

We can schedule them with
just a couple clicks.

That doesn't mean we should be.

And so that intentionality is really
important and I think the first step.

Matt Abrahams: Just because you
can, doesn't mean you should.

Rebecca Hinds: Exactly.

Because they're so expensive.

They're the most expensive
communication tool we have.

No other communication tool requires
everyone to be synchronously in

person, coordinating schedules,
real time conversation.

They're immensely expensive, not just
in terms of, you know, the payroll

costs, but also in terms of the
mental load that they often consume.

Matt Abrahams: That idea of expense
is really interesting because when we

just do it because it's easy, but when
you think about the cost, not just

financially, but in time and focus, it
really is one of, as you said, the most

expensive way to bring people together.

Are there other things we can
do besides being intentional?

Rebecca Hinds: Yes.

Often I'll be brought into an
organization when meetings are just so

broken that these surface level fixes
aren't going to work, and certainly

meeting audits aren't going to move
the needle in terms of truly resetting

the culture within the organization.

So I've ran many, of what
I call, meeting doomsdays.

So a meeting doomsday is essentially a
48 hour calendar cleanse where you delete

your recurring meetings for 48 hours.

Ideally, you do it as a team,
and ideally, in the best case,

you do it as a organization.

And after those 48 hours have
elapsed, employees are instructed to

rebuild their calendar from scratch.

So determine which meetings are worth
bringing back to the calendar and in

whatever design they think is gonna
be most valuable for the work at hand.

So think about the length, think about
the cadence, think about the attendees,

and rebuild your calendar from scratch.

And we find that type of full reset is
much more powerful than a meeting audit

because it empowers you to wipe the
slate clean, start with a fresh slate.

You're not in the mindset of defending
the meetings already on your calendar.

You're really starting from a fresh slate.

Matt Abrahams: I love this
idea of a calendar cleanse.

Are there certain criteria you advise
people to follow as they're thinking

about building back their calendars
in terms of importance, frequency?

What are the questions
we should think about?

Rebecca Hinds: In the book, I talk about
this idea of the four DCEO rule, right?

What actually deserves to be a meeting.

We have so many status updates on
our calendar, broadcast meetings,

information exchanges that shouldn't
be on our calendar, and so the four

DCEO test is essentially a two-part
test to determine whether a meeting

should exist on your calendar.

So first is the four D test.

A meeting should only exist if the
purpose is to decide, debate, discuss,

or develop yourself or your team.

Now you'll notice what's not on that list.

Broadcast updates, boss briefings,
information exchange, status updates.

Those don't pass the four D test.

Now, even if the content of a
meeting passes the four D test,

it still needs to pass the second
part of the test, the CEO test.

So a meeting should only be
scheduled if the purpose meets

one of the following criteria.

So it should be complex.

The content should be complex
enough where we can't efficiently

exchange it in advance.

It really does require bringing
everyone together, synchronously,

to bounce ideas off of each other,
iterate, build on top of one another.

E, is it emotionally intense?

So if it involves managing emotions or
interpreting emotions, you're giving

hard feedback or a performance review.

It's no longer just about
facts, it's about feeling.

Empathy is really important,
reading body language.

And then, O, is it a
one-way door decision?

So this comes from Amazon and Jeff
Bezos, where they essentially said

one-way door decisions are decisions
where once you walk through the door,

it's very difficult, if not impossible,
to go back the other direction.

And in those cases, the cost of
misalignment is so high, it's so risky,

where often you wanna have a meeting to
ensure at everyone's on the same page.

Matt Abrahams: Everybody knows
I love a good acronym, and

this is a very useful one.

So the four Ds, decide, debate,
discuss, or develop employees,

and that's not enough.

Even if you meet that bar, then
it's is it a complex decision?

Are emotions involved?

And is it a one-way high stakes choice?

If it meets those criteria,
then we put it on the calendar.

Rebecca Hinds: Then we
put it on the calendar.

But we do so very intentionally
and we think about various

dimensions of the meeting.

I think there are four in particular
that are important to think about.

One is the length.

We often default to 30 to 60
minute entries on our calendar.

A lot of that is because those are the
default settings of these calendar tools.

We need to think much more intentionally
about the length of meetings.

The cadence is also important.

So one of the things we see consistently
with these meeting resets and

doomsdays, people will start to think
carefully about whether that weekly

meeting needs to be a weekly meeting.

Can it be a monthly meeting?

Can it be a quarterly meeting?

And so the cadence is really important.

The attendees, so thinking about who
absolutely needs to be in the room.

Often we tend to over invite.

And agenda items.

So think very carefully about the items
you're putting on the agenda, because that

can be another source of meeting clutter
and meeting bloat within organizations.

Too many agenda items or agenda items
that don't really move the work forward.

Matt Abrahams: I really like
that thought process as well.

Let's look inside a meeting.

You talked about agendas.

Do you have any advice on
how to structure agendas?

Clearly you said not too many items.

I have a personal pet peeve.

I really don't like when meetings start
by reviewing the previous meeting.

'Cause I often don't like having
been in the previous meeting.

So to remind me of that meeting now
sort of sets me in a negative place.

I do understand that reviewing
previous work is important,

but maybe not the first thing.

Do you have suggestions for
what happens in the meeting?

Rebecca Hinds: Well, again, I think
that's a form of information exchange

and probably can be handled effectively
asynchronously before the meeting.

So my favorite strategy for agendas
is to think about each agenda item as

a combination of a verb and a noun.

Often agenda items are laundry list items
that are thrown together haphazardly.

There's research to suggest that
about 50% of agenda items I think

are recycled from the previous week.

So again, we're not being intentional
about how we're designing the meetings.

So instead of saying team discussion,
frame it as a verb and a noun.

Decide this noun, align on this.

And that also has the added benefit
of determining whether that actually

needs to happen in the meeting.

Because if you can't transform
something into a verb, it probably

doesn't deserve to be in the meeting.

We know that disproportionately
more time is spent on the

earlier items in the agenda list.

So, put your most important topics,
typically, up on the agenda item list.

Sometimes you might want to have some sort
of less cognitively taxing item to warm

people up, but in general, you also should
think about the ordering of agenda items.

Agendas also suffer from what's called
the law of triviality, which means

that essentially we're more inclined
to spend disproportionately high

time on the things that are easier.

The agenda items that are
less cognitively taxing.

So another word for this
law is called bike shedding.

And that term bike shedding comes from
an old story around two agenda items that

were essentially different in terms of
the cost associated with the agenda items.

One was a nuclear power plant
that was millions of dollars.

And the second was a bike shed that
was, I think a thousand dollars.

It was in Britain, so it was in pounds.

And essentially what they found is
most of the conversation focused

on the bike shed because it's much
easier to start to think about,

okay, what colors should the wall be?

Should there be a light in the bike shed?

Versus the nuclear power plant
is much more cognitively taxing.

It's much easier to skip that item,
default to the person who has the

best proposal, and avoid those
tough conversations around the

risky and cognitively taxing topics.

So again, this intentionality is
really important when we think

about agenda items as well.

Matt Abrahams: You taught me about
bike shedding, but I've seen it happen

in the meetings I've been in where
we spend time on the trivial matters.

So I heard a couple things there.

I love the idea of leading with
a verb, and I think this is

important not just in agenda items,
but in how you title meetings.

Because you can set people's
expectations just in the meeting title.

And people have heard me say this before,
I think the calendar invite is the most

underutilized expectation setting tool.

You can do it by what you call
it, as you said earlier, about

how long the meetings are.

And this idea of thinking about
cognitive effort for the agenda item.

So what I heard you say is perhaps start
with something that's less cognitively

burdensome at first, just to get things
moving, but then pretty soon after

the more intense or important issues,
and then save the ones that might be

a little less intense for the end.

Rebecca Hinds: In general, yes.

Again, thinking about systems
thinking, it's also important to

consider, you know, have you had
a heavy meeting day prior to that?

Are you already cognitively taxed?

Is the meeting happening at the beginning
of the day or after lunch, or at

the very end of, you know, a Friday?

And so thinking holistically also
about, okay, what is the context

that people are walking into as
they're walking into this meeting?

Matt Abrahams: That is
such an important point.

We tend to fixate on our
meeting and not the experience

of the people in the meeting.

And if this is my fifth meeting
of the day and this is important

work, maybe it's better to move
the meeting to the following day.

So as architects of meetings, we also
have to consider how our participants

are coming to us, and that I think
amen and exclamation point to that.

Many people might have heard at
companies like Amazon, and I think

Twitter did it as well, where everybody
shows up with a written document

and the first part of the meeting is
reading the six pager or whatever.

Do you have thoughts on that?

I can see the benefit of alignment,
because the reality is I ask my students

to do homework and some show up having
done it and some don't, and then all of

a sudden I'm teaching a class where not
everybody's on the same page, literally.

What do you think about that?

Rebecca Hinds: I think in general
it's a very healthy practice.

We see so many instances of people
showing up unprepared for the meeting,

and what they've done there is they've
raised the bar in terms of what

actually deserves to be a meeting.

You can't schedule the meeting
unless the memo has been written

and is thoroughly thought through.

And these are memos that often
take days or even weeks to produce.

And Jeff, you know, his mentality was if
you couldn't take the time to flesh out

your thoughts in a memo, you don't deserve
to hijack people's time in a meeting.

Now, I don't think every
meeting should start with a

written six page narrative memo.

But I do think for the ones where
there needs to be context setting,

where it involves a lot of complexity,
it can be a really healthy practice.

The other thing that Amazon did with
this memo culture is the study hall.

So you would start the meeting
independently reading the memo,

making notes and if you read the
memo, left your notes, and you had

nothing left else to contribute,
you were invited to leave the room.

And I think that's another healthy
practice because it again, starts

to be more intentional about how
we're designing the meeting with an

asynchronous component that people
can participate and then leave before

they're wasting time synchronously in a
meeting where they've already contributed

their thoughts and perspectives.

Matt Abrahams: I had not heard of the
study hall idea, but I really like it.

I am very excited to put into practice
a lot of these things you've said.

I do think that everybody's
meetings can benefit.

Before we end, I'd like to
ask you three questions.

One I'm gonna make up just
for you, and two, I've been

asking people for a long time.

Are you up for that?

Rebecca Hinds: I'd love it.

Matt Abrahams: I'd like to
give you a catharsis moment.

Share with me what is one of
the things that just bothers

you the most about meetings and
maybe provide a solution to help.

Rebecca Hinds: So I think what we've
talked about in terms of using meetings

as a default solution and the duct
tape for all of our problems in the

workplace, I think what annoys me most
is showing up to a meeting where it's

clear there hasn't been design and
intentionality going into that meeting.

And so I think tools like the four DCEO
test, treating meetings like a product,

thinking about user-centric design, who
is the audience, can be effective at

helping to minimize that tendency, that we
know is human nature, to use meetings as

this cure all solution in the workplace.

Matt Abrahams: I had a catharsis
just listening to you say that.

It was like, yes, those all, we need
to fix all of that, so thank you.

Question number two, who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

Rebecca Hinds: We talked about Jeff Bezos
at Amazon, and when it comes to meetings,

I have been really inspired by everything
he's done over many years, decades.

And his influence continues to
be felt at, at Amazon where we

did that collaboration cleanse.

I think him raising the bar in
terms of what deserves to be a

meeting, he thought very carefully
about the design of meetings.

So often he would leave a chair
empty in the physical meeting room to

symbolize the customer, the idea that
we should always be thinking about

the customer voice in our meeting.

That's inspired a lot of my thinking
around hybrid and virtual meetings

and creating some physical presence of
the remote folks in the physical room.

He famously had the two pizza
rule, as well, where you shouldn't

schedule a meeting if there are more
attendees than two pizzas can fill.

And so I think that intentionality is
something that I admire among various

communicators, but in particular, various
leaders at Amazon, including Jeff.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for sharing
all those things, the chair to

represent the customer, reminding
yourself who the true beneficiary

of the meeting is, really important.

My final question for you, Rebecca.

What are the first three ingredients
that go into a successful communication

recipe for meetings or beyond?

Rebecca Hinds: We've discussed the
importance of matching the communication

tool to the purpose, and I think that
holds for meetings certainly, but it

holds for all of our communication.

Think about the purpose of
the communication, the intent

of the communication, and
match the tool to that aim.

Second, intentionality, as we've
spoken about, we need to be approaching

communication as something that is
intentional, is intentionally designed.

That's more and more important, the more
expensive the communication tool is.

But absolutely, just because
communication is effortless doesn't mean

it needs to be in our organizations.

And then third,
user-centric design, right?

It's easy to come into a
meeting thinking about, what do

I need to say in the meeting?

It's much more important to think
about what do others need to understand

and walk away with from the meeting.

That user-centric design, designing for
the audience, just as you would a product,

is a hallmark of great meetings, and I
think great communication in general.

Matt Abrahams: Absolutely.

Tailoring to an audience is critical.

Making sure the tools fit the purpose
and being intentional in in general.

And thank you for intentionally
sharing your advice for us.

I know my meetings will be better
as a result of what we've discussed,

and I hope everybody listening
will improve those meetings.

Thank you so much.

Rebecca Hinds: Thanks Matt.

That was fun.

Matt Abrahams: Thanks for joining
us for another episode of Think

Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about communication
and meetings, please listen

to episode 124 and 125.

This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with
thanks to the Podium Podcast Company.

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