Are your meetings actually moving work forward or just filling your calendar? It’s natural for new managers to lean on meetings as a go-to leadership tool. But more meetings don’t mean better leadership. The fix isn’t running better agendas; it’s redesigning which meetings should exist in the first place.

Dr. Rebecca Hinds joins the podcast to discuss her new book, Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done. As the founder of Asana’s Work Innovation Lab and head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, Rebecca has spent a decade helping Fortune 500 companies—from Google to Dropbox to Salesforce—clean out what she calls their “meeting junk drawers.”

In this episode, Dr. Hinds breaks down why meetings are the most important product in your organization—and the least optimized. She walks through her seven design principles for fixing broken meetings, shares the simple two-part test (the 4D-CEO test) that tells you whether a meeting even deserves to exist, and explains why brainstorming sessions with your team are probably backfiring.

She also introduces the concept of “Meeting Doomsday”—a full calendar cleanse that companies like Dropbox, Shopify, and Slack have used to reclaim massive amounts of time—and shares practical strategies for new leaders who feel stuck in back-to-back meetings they didn’t create and don’t know how to escape.

Whether you inherited a calendar full of mystery meetings or you’re the one scheduling too many, this episode gives you the tools to stop treating meetings as the default and start designing them with purpose. Your time is too valuable for meetings that don’t earn their spot on the calendar.

Key Highlights

• Meetings are the most important product in your organization—and the least optimized. Treat them like a product, not a necessary evil.
• The 4D-CEO test: A meeting should only exist if its purpose is to Decide, Discuss, Debate, or Develop—and the content must be Complex, Emotionally intense, or a One-way door decision.
• Brainstorming is more effective done individually first—bring the team together to discuss and build on ideas, not to generate them from scratch.
• ROTI (Return on Time Investment): After about 10% of your meetings, ask attendees one question, “Was this meeting worth your time?”, to get real feedback without survey overload.
• Meeting Doomsday: A full calendar cleanse that gives employees the autonomy to decide which meetings to rebuild—triggering the IKEA effect so they actually stick to the changes.
• New managers disproportionately schedule more meetings because they’re learning the ropes and meetings feel like a safe space to lead. Start by questioning the cadence and length of every recurring meeting.
• No more than 7–8 people in a meeting—that’s where social loafing and multitasking kick in, and everyone’s time starts getting wasted.
• The contracting time effect: Even a meeting four hours away triggers a mental countdown that kills your ability to do deep work. No-meeting days reduce micromanagement and boost cooperation.
• Status updates don’t pass the 4D test—they can almost always be handled asynchronously.
• Frame meeting pushback as curiosity, not criticism: “I’ve noticed 20 minutes of this 30-minute meeting is spent on status updates. What if we tried something different?”

Links Mentioned

• Your Best Meeting Ever by Dr. Rebecca Hinds 
• rebeccahinds.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-hinds/

Guest Bio

Dr. Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert on organizational behavior and the future of work. She holds a BS, MS, and PhD from Stanford University. Rebecca founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean—first-of-their-kind corporate think tanks dedicated to conducting cutting-edge research on the future of work. Her research has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, and more. She has spoken at major stages including Dreamforce, SXSW, and INBOUND, and has appeared on Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast and as an instructor for CNBC’s Make It Masterclass. Her new book, Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, is available now.