Planned Initiatives
Week 1 - Review whether you need to be added as a participant to a meeting
Do you need to be participant in all the meetings on your calendar? Can you ask to be removed from the calendar event. Ask the people scheduling meetings review whether everyone needs to attend?
Week 2 - Review whether meetings can be reduced in length
Suggest whether meetings shortened from an hour to 50 minutes or 25 minutes. Meetings finish early so people can get to the next meetings.
Week 3 - Review whether meetings can be removed or held more infrequently
Suggest whether meetings can be reduced biweekly, monthly or bimonthly or removed all together.
Week 4 - Meeting-free days each week or biweek
Have days of the week or every other week where no meetings can be scheduled. This would mean moving the existing meetings on that day, and having the operations team agree not to schedule meetings on those days too. The conference rooms can be blocked off for these days so meetings can't be booked.
Unused initiatives
Sync biweekly meetings to same weeks of each month
An example would be that all biweekly meetings are scheduled on the 1st and 3rd weeks of each month. Grouping biweekly meetings into the same weeks could help reduce the number of meetings into single blocks, preventing scattered meetings breaking up contiguous blocks of time
Meetings can only be schedule on the 1st to 4th week
Some months have 5 week days, such as 5 Tuesdays. Schedule meetings only on the 1st - 4th Tuesday would have the same number of meetings per month, but remove 3 meetings over the year. This could be an example of a marginal gain.
Gamify reducing the number of meetings
Have weekly updates on whom has reduced the number of meetings they have, and provide an award at the end for the groups or people who have reduced their meeting the most.
Email the top 10% of JGIers.
Contact the JGIers in the top 10% in terms of number of meetings, to let them know they the people with the most number of meetings at the JGI. This could encourage them to reduce the number.
Implementation details
Follow up email about if anyone wants to opt in to meeting reduciton
Does anyone else what to opt in to be part of the initiatives for reducing the number of meetings. Ask which initiatives they want to participate in. Send out the survey again and describe what it is going to be used for.
Email each initiative out JGI wide to say what we are focusing on this week.
Site wide email each week to describe what we are going to focus on and how to do it. JGIers are encouraged to participate if they feel they want too, but it is not mandatory. Ask to support others at the JGI who want to reduce the number of meetings they have.
Publicise meeting reduction initiatives around the JGI
Notice on the JGI screens about the initiative. Potty training (contact Christine Naca).
Split meeting reduction cohort into three groups
- No action (control group)
- Receive email mid week on each initiative describing their progress based on the results available in google calendar
- Meet in person to create change agreement at start + mid week email
The aim of this is to determine how effect each of these strategies are. Splitting the cohort allows for a follow up analysis for the CIT to determine which strategies are effective.
Create change agreements
For those participants, meeting with them in person and review their goals for reducing the number of meetings. Include their figures from the google survey. Ask them to write this down, and maybe sign it (is this weird?). Follow up with them after the four weeks to see how they feel they progressed.
Provide mid-week feedback on progress via email
Contact group and ask how well they feel, and show how they are participating in the initiative (based on pulling from the google document of meetings).
