Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky doesn’t consider himself an averse to meetings. But he hates bad meetings. A conference room is characterized as having too many participants and too few active participants.
That’s the main reason he refuses to have regular one-on-one meetings with his team.
“The one-on-one model is flawed. It’s a recurring one-on-one, hour-long meeting where the employee owns the agenda. And what happens is, they talk to you about what you want to talk about. They often don’t talk about it, and you become like their therapist,” Chesky said. Recent interview with luck.
One of his biggest concerns about one-on-one meetings is that they are limited to just him and his employee. This means that the issues we raise go unheard, and opportunities to learn, brainstorm, and share are lost. Complain and listen to each other’s opinions. Instead, Chesky prefers to call or text employees for quick status updates. One-on-ones are best reserved for when employees have personal issues or concerns, Chesky said. However, if employees frequently complain privately about problems at work or about things they don’t feel comfortable bringing up to the entire group, it’s an ominous sign that there are larger issues within the organization.
Chesky prefers meetings with multiple participants, noting that most of his work actually happens during meetings. While such meetings allow for more employees to participate, he cautions that participants should not be included in meetings for participation purposes. “Almost every company is afraid to not invite people in in the name of being inclusive because they have too many employees, but that’s not what inclusion is about,” Chesky says. “It’s a slippery slope. You don’t need as many people in a meeting as possible, you want as few people as possible.” Often in large meetings like this, there are a few people dominating the conversation and Many spectators will appear. In his mind, everyone in the meeting should contribute to the discussion. Otherwise, the number of attendees at the meeting should decrease.
Chesky said that when Airbnb requires small, regular meetings, there is a post-mortem where what was discussed is documented and disseminated in the spirit of transparency, allowing others to weigh in. He said that people can voice their opposition. Chesky says that to get the most out of a meeting, there needs to be an agenda, the invitees need to be well prepared in advance of the meeting, and most importantly, there needs to be a final decision maker. I think it is necessary. “In many cases, there is no clear decision maker. Many peers are trying to agree,” Chesky said. “Your colleagues can’t agree right away, so you end up with a committee-like atmosphere where people just talk and talk endlessly without making a decision. There has to be a sense of urgency and action.”
Chesky isn’t the only Fortune 500 CEO to cut one-on-one meetings from his schedule. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said he doesn’t hold one-on-one meetings with any of his 60 direct reports. “They never hear me tell them anything that only they know. There’s not a single piece of information that I somehow pass on without telling the rest of the company.” Mr. Huang said. Speaking at Stanford University in March.. “We’re built around agility, where information flows as quickly as possible, and where people are empowered by what they can do, not what they know.” But like Chesky, , Mr. Hwang also emphasized that if an employee absolutely has to speak personally, he will give up everything for the employee.
Join the conversation on YouTube. Read the full interview here.
