Another Meeting That Could Have Been an Email: Redesigning How We Work Together with Rebecca Hinds

Rebecca Hinds, researcher, organizational designer, and author of Your Best Meeting Ever joins the Alan Briggs for a conversation that is long overdue in most, if not all organizations. Alan has threatened to write a book about meetings for years. He no longer has to. Why? Rebecca wrote it.

After 15 years studying how humans communicate and coordinate at work, Rebecca brings both the research and the practical frameworks to help leaders stop letting meetings kill their culture — and start designing them as the powerful, expensive tool they actually are.

If you've ever sat in a meeting wondering why you're there, or felt the creeping guilt of a calendar so packed with meetings that the real work gets squeezed into the margins, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Why we keep having bad meetings even when we know they're not working — and the visibility bias that drives the cycle

What "calendar carnage" is and why it's not just a scheduling problem — it's a fundamental communication problem

Meeting Doomsday — the 48-hour calendar cleanse that forces every recurring meeting to earn its spot back

Why AI is making meetings worse, not better — and the specific behaviors Rebecca is watching with alarm

The danger of sending your AI bot to a meeting instead of showing up yourself — and what it signals to your team

Why brainstorming is one of the most overrated meeting types — and what the research says actually produces better ideas

The four dimensions of meeting minimalism: length, cadence, attendees, and agenda items

Parkinson's Law and why your 30-minute meeting will always take 30 minutes — and how the rule of halves fixes it