7. Keep meetings short. Ideally, a meeting should be the length of a sitcom episode not a film by Martin Scorsese. Bartleby’s law is that 80% of the time of 80% of the people at meetings is wasted. If you doubt the numbers, have a think about the last big meeting you attended. Did everyone speak or was the discussion dominated by a small subset? How many people were gazing at their phones? A lot of people attend meetings out of a sense of duty or fomo (fear of missing out). And what is the purpose of the meeting? If it is just to update people on progress, that can be done in an email or in a one-to-one conversation (which has the added benefit of allowing you to talk to your staff). Big meetings involving all the staff should be reserved for big news like acquisitions or lay-offs.

8.Drop the team-building exercises. Paintballing in the woods, tackling an army assault-course, constructing a model of the Empire State Building from matchsticks—no one wants to do this stuff. They don’t want to go to an awayday weekend, either; they would much rather be at home with their families. Why not build a team by introducing its members and explaining what you want each of them to do? It is a lot cheaper. It also wastes a lot less of everybody’s valuable time.

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