Why banning Zoom meetings helped this business thrive

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.

After more than a year spent work­ing from home, the option to decline an invite to yet anoth­er video meet­ing would like­ly appeal to many. Almost every­one will have felt the exhaus­tion of yet anoth­er day spent in count­less video meet­ings, while there are con­cerns over the impact of all these calls on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

One com­pa­ny believes it has a solu­tion. Dig­i­tal con­tent pro­duc­er The­Soul Pub­lish­ing is tack­ling meet­ing cul­ture head-on. It has adopt­ed asyn­chro­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tion, one of the results of which is that inter­nal emails and video meet­ings are effec­tive­ly banned.

Explain­ing the deci­sion, COO Arthur Mame­dov says: “The ini­tial idea was to design the busi­ness in such a way that it could scale eas­i­ly across dif­fer­ent coun­tries. We also saw a lot of inef­fi­cien­cies with the tra­di­tion­al way of oper­at­ing.”

Mame­dov believes that the urge to call a meet­ing before mak­ing any deci­sions cre­ates bot­tle­necks in the busi­ness. This issue was exac­er­bat­ed as the com­pa­ny expand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to to find a time for face-to-face meet­ings that suit­ed peo­ple in mul­ti­ple time zones.

With 2,100 employ­ees across 70 coun­tries, the need for a more effi­cient means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion became vital.

“We looked at ways we could redesign the com­pa­ny to accom­mo­date few­er meet­ings,” Mame­dov says. “We found that asyn­chro­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tion and remote work­ing were a nat­ur­al fit.”

While many peo­ple will be famil­iar with syn­chro­nous, face-to-face meet­ings, asyn­chro­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tion dif­fers in the fact that both par­ties don’t need to be present at the same. In the case of The­Soul Pub­lish­ing, one per­son will ask a series of ques­tions and the sec­ond will then have time to for­mu­late their response in writ­ing, rather than as a con­ver­sa­tion.

The Cyprus-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny has been devel­op­ing its new com­mu­ni­ca­tion pol­i­cy since 2015. This has cul­mi­nat­ed in a two-page man­u­al that describes how staff should inter­act with oth­er team mem­bers. 

Although meet­ings are heav­i­ly dis­cour­aged, it is pos­si­ble to arrange one but only in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances. For a meet­ing to go ahead, a detailed meet­ing agen­da must be writ­ten 24 hours in advance, only two peo­ple can attend and they must last no longer than half an hour.

“This makes meet­ings tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble, but quite scarce because it takes so much time and ener­gy to request one,” Mame­dov says. “The whole process is designed in such a way that you would very rarely request one.”

Transparency is key

Ensur­ing the meet­ings ban doesn’t dis­rupt the run­ning of the busi­ness relies on mak­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion across teams much more trans­par­ent. This has result­ed in the ban­ning of anoth­er com­mon work­place annoy­ance – the inter­nal email.

Mame­dov explains: “Emails are often between two peo­ple and there’s no way to ensure that the entire team has mean­ing­ful access to this infor­ma­tion. We don’t encour­age any inter­ac­tions that can­not be shared with the whole team in an effi­cient man­ner.”

Instead, the com­pa­ny uses a range of tools to keep team mem­bers updat­ed on the progress of work. For exam­ple, a cor­po­rate wiki acts as a ref­er­ence point and place to store doc­u­ments, while project man­age­ment tools such as Asana help to keep teams focused on the task at hand.

“There is bare­ly a need for video meet­ings in that envi­ron­ment,” Mame­dov adds.

Mes­sag­ing tools such as Slack are used but dis­cus­sions are encour­aged to hap­pen on the platform’s group com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels so every­one can stay up to date. Pri­vate mes­sages are only used for per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions, such as wish­ing some­one a hap­py birth­day, accord­ing to Mame­dov.

The no-meet­ing pol­i­cy stretch­es right to the top of the com­pa­ny, with board meet­ings also com­ing under the ban. “Some­times board mem­bers speak one-to-one on Zoom but almost no deci­sions require val­i­da­tion from the entire board, as we want to be more agile,” Mame­dov says.

Maintaining company culture

Despite reports of Zoom fatigue caus­ing employ­ees to feel drained, online meet­ings have remained one of the few ways for employ­ees to keep in touch with each oth­er through­out the pan­dem­ic. 

How­ev­er, Mame­dov does not believe this form of inter­ac­tion is nec­es­sary for build­ing team spir­it and a com­pa­ny cul­ture. “Peo­ple man­age to build very deep pro­fes­sion­al con­nec­tions, regard­less of being in the same room,” he says. “Look at inter­ac­tions that hap­pen at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el on Red­dit, for exam­ple. Peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly build mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with oth­ers on that plat­form with­out ever talk­ing face-to-face.”

This does­n’t mean that employ­ees nev­er have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet up. The com­pa­ny host­ed a get-togeth­er in Cyprus to cel­e­brate 15 years of the busi­ness, with 600 employ­ees fly­ing in for the event. “A lot of peo­ple were able to see each oth­er for the first time, even though they had been work­ing togeth­er for years, which was beau­ti­ful,” says Mame­dov.

As trav­el restric­tions lift, there are hopes that these com­pa­ny-wide cel­e­bra­tions can hap­pen on an annu­al basis.

Although a ban on meet­ings may not suit every organ­i­sa­tion, Mame­dov is con­fi­dent that a sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion phi­los­o­phy could be adopt­ed by most IT-dri­ven busi­ness­es. 

As a result of its no-meet­ings pol­i­cy, he claims the com­pa­ny is more effi­cient and hap­pi­er. “When every­one is able to do what they are best at, rather than get­ting bored at meet­ings, it real­ly changes how teams appre­ci­ate their dai­ly work. It’s a game chang­er, from what I’ve observed so far.”