In an era of hyper-efficiency, leaders are taking a close look at the meetings on their calendars — and Gap’s CEO is no exception.
Since returning to lead Gap’s global brand in 2020, CEO Mark Breitbard told Business Insider he’s been focused on restoring the brand’s relevance, and part of that has included stripping away bureaucracy and unnecessary layers.
Meetings are often viewed as the pinnacle of corporate bureaucracy, — and Breitbard said he follows three rules to keep them in check.
The 3 rules
Breitbard said that if no one is sure why a recurring meeting is happening, it should be examined critically.
“If it’s a default meeting, like it happens every single week, then I feel like we need to question it,” Breitbard told Business Insider.
His second rule is to keep the invite list tight. Breitbard said it’s a red flag when he walks into a meeting, and someone asks, “Oh, are you in this meeting?”
“If you ask, the answer is ‘no.’ I clearly don’t need to be here if you have to ask,” Breitbard said, suggesting that the meeting shouldn’t be so big that people are invited without having a clear purpose for attending.
His third habit rule is to end on time — or early. He said when it’s near the end of a meeting, there often comes a time when people say something along the lines of, “Well, we have five more minutes…”
“We don’t have five more minutes,” Breitbard said. “We’re done now.”
Breitbard said that people often book 30-minute meetings, but he’s inclined to finish earlier if the purpose of the discussion has been accomplished.
“At minute 24, I say, ‘OK, good, this was great. Thanks, everyone,'” Breitbard said, adding that when people question if it’s really time to end, he says, ‘Yeah, we got what we needed.'”
Cutting down on meetings
The debate over meetings and how they should be run isn’t new. In 2018, Elon Musk said in an email that large meetings should be scrapped or kept “very short,” and billionaire investor Mark Cuban has similarly said they get in the way of his productivity.
But in today’s results-driven work culture, the push to rein in the amount of time spent in meetings in has taken on a new form of urgency.
Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy told Business Insider in December that “meetings are like bureaucracies,” and he has four rules for managing his own, which involve keeping gatherings short, ensuring there’s a purpose, and making sure there’s an agenda and notes.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, also recently announced that recurring meetings would be canceled every six months and only re-added if “absolutely necessary.” He also encouraged making recurring one-on-ones biweekly “by default” and said workers should decline meetings that interfere with “focus blocks.”
