I work with a few organisations that have the two-minutes-late problem.

Everyone is always two minutes late to every meeting. Always.

I don’t take it personally, but it’s so consistent I started getting more curious about it.

Does this happen to you?

If so, I presume it’s not because you’re taking a healthy break between calls.

Or were really immersed in something and lost track of time.

No it’s never those reasonable reasons.

It’s most often because your calendar has back-to-back calls for most of the work day.

More fundamentally, it's because we are unrealistic about the time things take.

And things spill over creating a cascade that leads to every meeting starting slightly late and disjointed, with tired, context-switching peers.

If you say, yeah that’s us, but…
💪 it’s hard, but we deal with it
💥 our work is important and we're committed enough to do the grind

You might want to re-examine these buts.

You are likely missing big things because you’re too tired from all those back-to-back meetings.

1, Are your meetings really moving your work forward?
2, Are you assuming that you need meetings to do things that could be done in less expensive ways?
3, Are you too exhausted or busy from meeting all day that you can’t see that you need to make changes?

If you are a two-minutes-late team, let's think more about the costs and benefits of a breathless meeting culture.
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Where to start?

Compare the time you’re putting in with the impact you’re getting out.

Take a look at your last month of meetings.

What meetings do you remember as having really driven work forward?

What made those meetings special and important to have?