Can more creative ways of meeting save our focus?
Back in the 1960s, company leaders spent 10 hours a week in meetings. Today, it’s much higher—more than two hundred percent higher. Time spent in meetings is still rising. Every year since 2000, total meeting time has increased by about 10% for everyone regardless of role. Despite a trend in shorter meetings that started from the pandemic (great!), the total number of meetings continues to rise (not so great). Meetings where people synchronously meet face-to-face—whether in real life, on a video conference, or over the phone—are now the go-to standard for most forms of communication and collaboration. Need to share information with your team? Brainstorm new marketing campaign ideas? Deliver training? Book a meeting. It’s a one-size-fits-all tool that has turned our calendars into Tetris screens. Our workdays have become so dominated by these syncs and check-ins that it can be a challenge to see another way. Instead of pointing fingers at inexperienced managers, an increase in remote and cross-functional work, or even FOMO as the cause of our meeting fatigue, what if we looked for more options in the way we choose to meet, collaborate, and communicate? This isn’t all to say that face-to-face communication doesn’t have a place in modern work culture. There’s very little that can replace real-time conversations when it comes to getting to know a new colleague or discussing a sensitive matter, for instance. Yet anyone who has faced eight solid hours of endless synchronous meetings knows this isn’t sustainable for every situation. Instead, exploring alternative meeting formats can give everyone involved more choice and flexibility. By empowering people to communicate in mutually appropriate ways, we can reduce meeting times without compromising much communication or collaboration. We can reclaim time, refocus our attention, and pour renewed efforts into more focused work. Nearly 70% of managers say meetings keep employees from working and completing all their tasks. One size does not fit all Traditional meetings follow the same general structure—a format of real-time communication provided synchronously between present parties. It’s a default model that aims to serve everyone, but appealing to everyone can often mean appealing to no one. In his book The End of Average, Todd Rose reported on how the United States Air Force modernized their old-fashioned cockpits in the late 1940s. Taking measurements from over 4,000 pilots, they designed a new layout around the median fit. By designing every element for the average pilot, they designed for everyone… or so they thought. When test pilots took to the skies, they kept crashing. Something was wrong. Eventually, one scientist began comparing individual pilots to the average model. There, he discovered the issue: not a single pilot fit the average. Their one-size-fits-all cockpit just didn’t work. The same result can be seen decades later, in an albeit, completely different environment. Today, nearly 70% of managers say meetings keep employees from working and completing all their tasks. Three-quarters of employees say they tune out of meetings and do other work. Around 90% say they regularly daydream in meetings. The average model just isn’t working. Pilots needed customizable cockpits to be effective. To do our best work, we too need more flexibility in the way we meet. As the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. Modern meetings have become the Maslow’s hammer of the workplace, but introducing a few new tools can bring a more agile, renewed perspective on collaboration. Flexible formats unleash creativity Marc Bromhall used to rely on a mix of in-person and Zoom meetings to run his marketing company, Marbro Media. Every week, he’d spend eight or nine hours in recurring meetings, hashing out ideas and strategies with his team. But he knew that wasn’t the best use of anyone’s time. “The core issue of each meeting comprised 20% of it,” he explains. “The other 80% consisted of fluff, mindless chatter, and small talk.” He began designing an alternative meeting format that cultivated creativity and collaboration without wasting time. In the end, Marc landed on what he calls a voice-jam, “a combination of voice notes and a jam board.” Aside from one synchronous face-to-face meeting, voice-jams power all Marbro Media’s meetings. Take their weekly marketing meeting. Before, it was rambling and disjointed. Now, every attendee has their own slide on a jamboard. They embed content and post voice notes to share ideas. The format keeps discussions laser-focused while retaining many of the good parts of face-to-face communication, such as intonation and tone. Marc says the flexible format freed him from endless hours of meandering meetings: “There's no small talk and talking for the sake of talking. Employees simply record what they have to say and send it on.” All around the world, people are replacing one-size-fits-all meetings with innovative alternatives. Async video creates organizational memory Ronald Osborne’s story is similar. As a small business consultant, he often found himself drawn into lengthy face-to-face meetings and calls. Not only did they take up a lot of time, but he also felt like meeting content was getting lost or forgotten in notes and minutes. He began experimenting with asynchronous video, recording short presentations, and sharing them with project team members. He says it’s working well. For one thing, it’s eliminated the challenge of time zones. Clients and colleagues access recordings on their schedule—not his. However, the biggest difference lies in response time. In a face-to-face meeting, there’s an expectation to reply immediately. Should we expand into Asia-Pacific? Yes. What applicant should we hire? Steve. Do you like product-led or sales-led growth? Product. Meetings rarely provide time to pause, mull, and think—all of which are essential components of effective decision-making. Online tools for asynchronous video, like Dropbox Capture, allow people to digest information before responding. With the ability to record, re-record, and edit videos, responses can be more thoughtful and concise. Beyond voice and video Many business communication strategies rely on frequency. Daily standups, for example, allow people to share their achievements, plans, and roadblocks every day. The theory goes that teams can identify problems as early as possible and work together to solve them. The same’s true for project updates, line management one-to-ones, and other recurring meetings. But that safety net comes at a cost. Daily or weekly interruptions shatter schedules, turning unbroken stints of concentration into fragmented bursts of work. To safeguard his colleagues’ schedules, Chris Johnson, marketing coordinator at a technical talent marketplace, implemented a “no daily meetings” rule. Instead, he redeveloped recurring meetings into slimmed-down templatized rituals. His team’s daily standup, once a frustrating interruption, is now a dedicated Slack channel. Every day, his colleagues answer the three core questions: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What’s blocking your progress? “It allows everyone in the company to have visibility into what other teams are working on without overloading folks with information,” Chris explains. In other words, the same impact with less disruption. More tools, better communication Marc, Ronald, and Chris are not the only people exploring communication optionality. All around the world, people are replacing one-size-fits-all meetings with innovative alternatives. Entrepreneur Kyle Clements stopped delivering synchronous training sessions. Instead, he records asynchronous videos and shares them online. “Most people simply don’t retain something the first time they hear it,” he says. “Async videos allow employees to watch and rewatch a tutorial or important walkthrough as many times as they need. Instead of running feedback sessions, financial services educator Brian DeChesare sends out Google Forms. “While we can’t eliminate every meeting, we use these forms to reduce the unnecessary ones and foster more effective meetings by planning with important data already in hand,” he explains. Growth executive Trevor Ford employs transparent project management tools to nix regular status updates. Marketing leader Sarah Schultz replaced synchronous information-sharing sessions with detailed written briefs. And Chris Johnson didn’t just get rid of standups. He replaced one-way information-sharing meetings with asynchronous video, text, and documents. This isn’t to say synchronous face-to-face meetings don’t have their place. It’s difficult to build personal relationships over a jamboard. It’s tough to open up about workplace challenges via text. But what innovators have shown is that optionality—choice over how you communicate—is the future. By selecting the best meeting format, people can focus instead on work that really matters.Director Chris Zalla on creating a space for creativity
Did you ever have a teacher who opened your mind because they somehow made learning joyful? I was lucky enough to have two. (Shout out to Jane Smiley and Faye Whitaker!) Both had so much enthusiasm for what they were teaching, it enthralled everyone in the classroom. In the new film Radical—premiering this week at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival—writer and director Christopher Zalla brings the true story of one such teacher to the screen. In a sixth grade class in Matamoros, Mexico, Sergio Juarez—played by Eugenio Derbez, who also appeared in Sundance breakout hit and Academy Award winner CODA—tries a radical new way to inspire his overlooked, underperforming students to rise above apathy and believe in their potential. The film reunites longtime collaborators Zalla, Derbez, and producer Ben Odell, who worked together on Padre Nuestro (Sangre de mi Sangre), winner of the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival “Way back then, Eugenio said, ‘Someday I'm gonna find a drama, and I'm gonna call you.’” Zalla recalls. “It just took him 15 years, you know?” As the long-percolating production finally makes its debut this week, Zalla tells us about coaxing a dramatic performance from a comedic actor, using Dropbox to streamline his casting process, and finding a way to embrace chaos and capture authenticity. When did you first become aware of the story the film is based upon? In 2018, Ben Odell sent me the article in WIRED magazine that the movie was based on. It was written by Joshua Davis, who's also a producer on the project. Ben and Joshua actually worked together before. Joshua wrote an earlier WIRED magazine article about a group of kids in an underserved area who entered a robot competition and won the national competition. They made a movie about that called La Vida Robot quite a few years ago. So when this magazine article came out, there was already this established connection: they optioned the magazine article, then sent it to me. What spoke to you about this story? In the article, there’s this phenomenal true story of what the students actually accomplished in just one year. But to me, the much more striking data was how well they all did. Then of the kids got in the top 0.1% nationally. Sergio turned this [school] around in the most radical way. That spoke to me: This guy’s doing something. As we peeled back the onion on the real story, we discovered that Sergio had a nervous breakdown. All he wanted to do was be a teacher that affected lives—because he had that teacher—and he was failing miserably. He had to try something totally different. Which is not terribly different from me in my own career at the moment that I got that article. But what he ended up grabbing onto was this notion of child-directed education [inspired by Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project]. There's a great line in the movie, “They'll learn to do what they want to learn to do.” That's the thesis. So he gets this [idea] and decides he's gonna do it. He wings it. That uncertainty and honest vulnerability, to me, was the electric spark that really set it all off. The dramatic tension was: Is he going to succeed? What happens if he doesn’t? Here's the guy who’s had a nervous breakdown. Is he actually all there? Does he have a screw loose? Those were just fun things to set me off on the writing journey. Was there a particular teacher in your life that made you want to honor the impact educators can have on their students?Both my parents were actually college professors, so I was raised in an environment that hyper-valued education. But I had a fifth grade teacher, Ms. McCarthy—I'll never forget her name—who had this ability to get on our level and relate to us not as a teacher/student dynamic, but as our buddy. [She] just made learning fun. You wanted to impress her. You wanted to live up to her expectations. How has your filmmaking process evolved in recent years? I feel like if I'm not learning, if i'm not exploring, if i'm not trying new things and truly experimenting, there's no reason for me to do this. There has to be something new that draws me into material. I moved to Guatemala [because] I felt like my career was not going the direction I wanted. I just wanted to do a reset, incubate, bring the power back to myself, write all the things that I wanted to write. This project was like a lifeline from heaven. One of the things that grabbed me about the story was what can happen when people get a chance. There are so many people in the world who never get a chance. This is a story about what happens when they do. I had a huge chance, then they gave me a second chance by calling me with this. So there was something very personal in that connection to this teacher who had the crisis and decides to reboot. For him, it’s also a second chance. “There are so many people in the world who never get a chance. This is a story about what happens when they do.” What’s your creative process? Normally I am a storyboarder. I am obsessive. I plan every shot of every movie out. This time, I said, “Twenty five kids in the room, sometimes 150 out in the yard—I don't want to dictate that. I don't want to drive that. I want to follow it and see what happens. Ultimately, I want to capture the energy. I want the camera to be an 11-year-old kid. I told everybody the singular visual inspiration for this movie is Charlie Brown. At the beginning of the movie, you'll see that. We have the adults cut off at the face. We even obscure their dialogue to make it a little less easy to hear, to intentionally frustrate the audience, to create a chaos into which Eugenio can hop in on their frame and their level, then grab their attention. But to do that, we had to actually embrace the chaos. For example, there's a 10-minute long teaching scene. It took us three days to shoot. I just let the camera operators rip. We had three cameras set up. It was to allow the chaos but also—I learned this from seeing interviews with Robert Altman—when you have three cameras shooting all the same time and they're roving, nobody knows if they're on or not. So the entire room constantly has to be real. They have to be there. The kids started ad-libbing and guessing answers because they were actually interested in what they were learning. That's the the biggest thing I did, technologically, that was completely new to me—thrilling and dangerous. Did that atmosphere lead to some improvised lines? Oh, all the time. First thing to know is, I speak fluent Spanish, but I am a gringo. Even though I write the script, then translate it, I give it completely to the actors. I let them say it as they would say it. That's the beginning of a trust process where they might even feel intimidated by the amount of trust I give them. But it gives everybody ownership. It opens up the space when something occurs to them in the moment that isn't scripted. “You're the author: Say it.” I’m working with a national treasure, Eugenio Derbez. His instincts for comedy are so good. He did so many things that weren't scripted that made the movie better. Filmmaking technology has changed so much in the past 15 years. Which tools make your job easier now? Dropbox was our production hub. It was the way we communicated and updated [our database]. The big thing was [audition videos]. We auditioned 400 or 500 children, at least. The crazy thing was finding Paloma and Lupe [two of the film’s young student characters]. The girl who plays Lupe in the movie was amazing. But she was 11 and it was clear that no one else we were auditioning could hold a candle to her. All the other kids I was casting were more like 12 or 13. There was this [problem]: We can't find Paloma. The casting directors had this huge file and it was like their “also ran” file. At three o'clock in the morning, I couldn't sleep up. I can't sleep before I make a movie. I'm just going through the general file, and it's like, “Holy sh*t!” I woke up my wife [and said] “You've got to see this. It's [Paloma]!” In the old days, I'd have to be in a room, and have people come in again and again. [Casting on video] was just a huge streamliner for me. For the selection process, to be able to jump from play to stop, play to stop, I’m at least eight times more productive [than casting in person]. The fact that it was just there, so that at 3 o'clock in the morning, I could browse through it and discover the lead actress in our movie—it was instrumental. What advice would you give creators who are having trouble getting into a creative flow? I think the most important thing is that you have to have the discipline to create a space for yourself. For me, that discipline comes with routine. Find your routine. The number one rule is keep your ass in the chair for whatever that set amount of time is. You don't actually have to produce anything, but you have to keep your ass in the chair. There's a magical thing that happens when you create the space. Things come. Things start to flow. I have a very specific methodology myself. It's one of the benefits of being here in Guatemala. I hike up a mountain. I jump into an ice cold pool. I meditate. Then I write outside. I do all this starting [around] 5 am. At 11 o'clock, my day is done. Whether I wrote anything or not, whether it was good or not. My only job was to keep my butt in the chair. It turns out that it works really well. “There's a magical thing that happens when you create the space. Things come. Things start to flow.” The thing that you have is your voice. The thing that makes you different is your perspective. So that's all the more reason to create a space where you are shutting out the world and just figuring out what comes up out of you, figuring out how to connect to that. What do you do when you find yourself creatively stuck? This movie was five years in the making. Nothing about it was overnight. It was a lot of incremental progression. It's really easy to start a project and think you need to be there. That's death. You can't get there. You just have to get here. It's just one foot in front of the other. Radical premiered Thursday, January 19 at The 2023 Sundance Film Festival. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.400 Million Strong
We created Dropbox in 2007 with one idea in mind: to give people simple, secure access to their files anytime, anywhere. Back then, we couldn’t have imagined the incredible things — big and small — that people would do with Dropbox. Today, 400 million people around the world are using Dropbox. They sync 1.2 billion files every day, create over 100,000 new shared folders and links every hour, and make 4,000 edits every second. They launch startups, create award-winning documentaries, and build their dream homes. We’re proud of the role we play in people’s lives around the world. As our community continues to grow, we wanted to reflect on a few of the things we’ve built recently to make Dropbox better for you. Faster, simpler access to content Your files are more than just .jpgs, .docs, and .ppts. They’re your ideas, memories, projects, and work — which is why it’s crucial that you have instant access to them from anywhere. We redesigned image and document previews and implemented full-text search to save you time and improve productivity. With over 35 billion Microsoft Office files stored on Dropbox, our Office integration is a natural fit, letting you edit Word, PowerPoint, or Excel files directly from your web browser or mobile device. We also brought great new features like recent files, commenting, and PDF viewing to our iOS and Android apps so people can keep working from wherever they are. Better ways to share and work together With millions of people sharing on Dropbox every day, we put a lot of effort into making it easier for you to share and work with others. Now you can comment on files in Dropbox, and work in real time on Microsoft Office documents using the Dropbox badge. Sharing has gotten faster and easier with new changes to the Dropbox website, and a new extension for your Gmail account. We're also developing a simple, new way for teams to write together. If you want a sneak peek, request an invite to join our Notes beta here : ) Tools to power businesses Today, over 100,000 companies are using Dropbox for Business to work smarter across industries like media, construction, and education, to name just a few. We’re committed to building simple, secure technology for businesses that employees love using. Over the past year, we've brought you a better way to manage teams with Groups, better sharing controls, and powerful integrations with best-in-class tools for eDiscovery, DLP, and other business-critical applications thanks to the Dropbox for Business API. And just last week we announced more management and security features for IT. These are only a few of the things we've done to make Dropbox the best place to create, share, and work with others. We've got a lot more coming, so stay tuned!
