All of the interest in our unlimited paid leave policy got me thinking about some of the other changes we've made recently.  One of my favorite changes was combining two weekly meetings into one.  We used to have a Monday "staff meeting," and a separate Wednesday "management meeting."  The Monday meeting was a somewhat perfunctory series of announcements, telling everyone what each group was doing (yawn).  The Wednesday meeting was more of a roll-up-your-sleeves and deal with issues thing.

As we evaluated all of our policies and practices, we realized that there's no earthly reason not to let everyone in on the details of the Wednesday meeting.  So we changed the Monday meeting to a "Kickoff Meeting," and invite everyone to participate actively.  We still give a rundown of progress toward corporate goals, but we also allow room for getting work done.  The cross-group communication has been great, and we've saved ourselves several man-hours per week, just in meeting time.

While larger corporations couldn't hold weekly meetings of the entire staff, I think most businesses could benefit from evaluating the usefulness of their recurring meetings.  We've put 7 man-hours of time (or more) back into the hopper, just with this simple move.

How many meetings could you do away with at your company and not miss a beat?