Effectively Timebox Your Meetings
Long stand ups lost my small company more than $30,000 annually
I won the Driven Award at my former company. I researched key things that would help me win for the next quarter, and I decided to focus on conducting a workshop that would train my company on how to run more efficient meetings.
I sat in other people’s standups for a few weeks. I also started recording the length of my own standups via a stopwatch. What I found was astounding.
My company was small, so any financial loss would impact us. I calculated the hourly rate of everyone in the room at each stand up, the length of the stand up, and on average (sans vacation time), how many hours annually people would spend in meetings like this.
We lost more than $30,000 a year on running longwinded standups.
The worst offenders went for over an hour. The best were still too long at 20 minutes.
It gets better.
We still received client complaints that we weren’t identifying, prioritizing and fixing showstoppers for production quickly enough. So, blowing all that hot air did nothing for us. And the development team would miss key details lost in seemingly endless status updates.
If you suffer from standups that run entirely too long, these are likely the reasons why:
Overprioritizing Status Updates
When team members spend time detailing every task they did yesterday and what they plan to do next week, it turns the meeting into a progress report session. Standups should be about alignment and blockers—not timelines.
Fear of Missing Out
Some folks feel compelled to share or stay involved in every topic, even if it's not relevant to them. This can spiral into side conversations that derail the purpose of the meeting.
Being an Unyielding Diplomat
Trying to ensure everyone has equal speaking time, even when they don’t have meaningful updates, wastes collective time. Fairness is important—but so is efficiency.
Not Standing Up to Management
When leadership uses the standup to fish for details or pivot the conversation toward strategic planning, it can hijack the meeting. It’s easy to let it slide, but that sets a precedent.
I listed some key indicators that incite long, drawn-out meetings. Now, I want to give some proactive solutions that can help you curb your lingering conversations:
Find a gatekeeper
Assign someone (not always the same person!) to politely cut off tangents and guide the conversation back to the standup’s purpose.Wear a rubber band
It sounds weird, but it works. Snap it gently when you catch yourself rambling. It’s a physical reminder to keep it short and relevant.Write an agenda with group input
Even a loose structure helps. A shared agenda ensures everyone has clarity on what to cover and can prepare updates ahead of time.Gather information before conducting a meeting
Collect updates asynchronously—via Slack, Notion, or a shared doc—so the standup is reserved for solving problems, not reporting tasks.Confirm key details with stakeholders upfront
If a topic requires more than a minute or two, it likely needs a separate conversation. Handle deep dives offline or schedule a follow-up.
If you have any other reasons you think meetings, such as standups, run too long, then drop a comment so we can have a separate discussion on this. Let’s build better, shorter meetings—together.
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I am always looking to take on complex projects—it’s a fun challenge that keeps me mentally fit. Feel free to DM or email (elecia@gmail.com) if you feel I’d be a great fit for your role.