Meetings Are Toxic to Distinctiveness

Your company’s most dangerous competitor isn’t in your market. It’s sitting in your calendar disguised as a “weekly status update.”

Picture this: A young software company launches with a distinctive voice, an innovative approach to customer problems, and language so refreshingly direct it feels like a revelation in their industry. Their early customers rave not just about the product but how the company feels different—how communications are clear rather than clouded in jargon, how their approach cuts through conventional wisdom.

Fast forward eighteen months. Their headcount has tripled. Their calendar is packed with cross-functional alignment meetings, quarterly planning sessions, and daily stand-ups. And something else has changed—that distinctive voice has grown fainter. Their communications now sound eerily similar to competitors. Their once-innovative approach has been smoothed into something more “professional.” Their essence—that irreducible core we explored in Section I—has been diluted meeting by meeting, hour by hour.

What happened?

The same thing that happens to countless organisations: the traditional meeting became their assembly line for mediocrity.

Why Meetings Are Homogenisation Machines

The problem isn’t bad meetings. The problem is that the meeting itself is a format designed for conformity, not distinctiveness.

The Social Conformity Factor

In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted what would become landmark experiments on conformity. Participants were asked to match the length of a line to one of three comparison lines—a simple visual task with an obvious correct answer. The twist? They were placed in a room with several others (who were actually confederates in the experiment) who unanimously gave wrong answers.

The results were striking: Over a third of participants conformed to the obviously incorrect group opinion. When faced with a unanimous majority, many people publicly stated what they knew to be false.

This is precisely what happens in your conference room every day.

Your team sits around a table. Your most confident executive speaks first. Others nod. Someone raises a minor concern but phrases it carefully to avoid seeming oppositional. By the time discussion reaches your quietest team member—who may have the most valuable perspective—the social script has been written. The meeting has created the appearance of consensus while actually manufacturing conformity.

As we discussed in “Stop Copying Competitors” back in Chapter 3, this conformity tendency is especially dangerous because it pulls organisations toward industry norms—the very norms that prevent differentiation.

The Language Homogeniser

Remember our exploration of “The Death of Boring” in Chapter 39? We examined how conventional business communication actively harms positioning and gravitational pull.

Nowhere is this more evident than in meetings.

Listen carefully in your next meeting. Notice how people’s language shifts from the natural expressions they use in one-to-one conversations to a strange dialect we might call “Meeting-ese.” Concrete statements become abstract. Straightforward questions become softened inquiries. Distinctive personalities fade into professional personas.

The finance director who speaks with passionate precision about cash flow in private conversation suddenly talks about “optimising resource allocation paradigms” in the boardroom. The product designer who describes user problems with empathetic clarity when working with her team shifts to “enhancing user engagement metrics” in the cross-functional review.

Every meeting is a powerful centrifuge spinning the humanity and distinctiveness out of your communication. And as we’ve established throughout this book, distinctiveness is the very thing that makes you the obvious choice.

The Essence Diluter

In Chapter 4, we examined how essence forms from a founder’s journey and emotional foundations—the spark, the chip on the shoulder, the belief, the need, the ideal, or the core conviction that drives a company’s creation.

Traditional meetings are where essence goes to die.

The structured formality of traditional meetings—the agenda, the time constraints, the focus on immediate deliverables—leaves no space for the “heart, wonder, and curiosity” we identified as the emotional foundation of essence. The pressure to “be professional” strips away the human elements that make your company distinctive.

When Basecamp (formerly 37signals) wrote their seminal piece “Meetings Are Toxic,” this was precisely their point. Their article didn’t just argue that meetings waste time—it argued that meetings damage the very culture that makes an organisation special. As they’ve maintained their “calm company” positioning (explored in Chapter 11), their stance against traditional meetings has remained a core expression of their essence.

Every Meeting Is Borrowed from Your Competitors

Your calendar is a competitive battlefield. Every standard meeting is territory surrendered to conformity.

When you gather your team in a traditional meeting format, you’re essentially saying: “For the next hour, let’s think, speak, and work exactly like our most boring competitor.”

This might sound dramatic, but consider what happens in most meetings:

• Social dynamics push toward consensus rather than distinctiveness
• Language shifts from authentic to corporate
• Status hierarchies trump insight
• Format constrains creative thinking
• Time pressure forces reductive decisions
• Structure privileges certain cognitive styles

All of these factors pull you toward industry averages—the very opposite of the positioning distinctiveness we explored in Section II.

Companies Fighting Back Against Meeting Culture

The good news? Some of the most distinctive companies have recognised this problem and developed alternative approaches to collaboration that preserve rather than dilute their essence.

Basecamp: Asynchronous by Design

As we explored in our examination of small company advantages in Chapter 11, Basecamp has built their entire operational approach around maintaining their distinctive essence. A cornerstone of this approach is their radical stance on meetings.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (Basecamp’s founders) have called meetings “the worst kind of workplace interruption.” Instead of defaulting to meetings for collaboration, they’ve built systems for asynchronous communication that preserve thoughtfulness and individuality.

Their approach includes:

• Documentation over discussion
• Written updates rather than status meetings
• Dedicated “no-meeting” days (like their “Meeting-Free Wednesdays”)
• Structured processes that reduce coordination needs

This isn’t just about productivity—it’s about preserving the distinctive “calm company” essence that makes Basecamp the obvious choice for their target customers.

Automattic: P2 and the Blog-Based Organisation

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has developed one of the most distinctive alternatives to meeting culture. Despite having over 1,000 employees distributed across 75 countries, they’ve built a collaboration system that minimises synchronous meetings while maximising authentic expression.

Their secret? P2—an internal blog system that replaces most meetings and emails. As Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CEO, explained: “Almost everyone at Automattic is a blogger, but for the first couple of years of the company we didn’t blog much internally.”

P2 changed Automattic by:

• Creating a system where ideas are judged by quality, not by who speaks loudest
• Preserving the authentic voice of each team member
• Documenting decisions and discussions automatically
• Enabling thoughtful collaboration across time zones
• Reducing the “performative” aspects of workplace communication

This approach directly preserves the essence of Automattic—a company built on democratising publishing and giving every voice a platform.

Atlassian: Plays Not Meetings

Atlassian, which we discussed in Chapter 44 in relation to their engineer storytelling approach, has created yet another alternative to traditional meetings with their “Team Playbook.”

Rather than defaulting to open-ended meetings, Atlassian uses structured “plays”—specific formats designed for particular collaboration needs. Each play has clear steps, timeboxed activities, and defined outcomes. This transforms generic meetings into purposeful collaboration that preserves distinctive thinking.

Their Teamistry podcast further explores how exceptional teams achieve remarkable results—often through collaboration methods that break from standard meeting formats.

The Alternatives: Preserving Distinctiveness While Collaborating

How do you maintain necessary collaboration without sacrificing your distinctiveness? The answer lies in what I call the Distinctive Collaboration Protocol—a framework for designing collaboration methods that amplify rather than dilute what makes you unique.

The Distinctive Collaboration Protocol

This approach rests on three core principles:

1. Purpose Before Format

Never default to a meeting. Instead, start by clearly defining what you’re trying to achieve, then select the collaboration method best suited to that specific purpose.

Ask:

• Does this need synchronous input from multiple people?
• Is real-time discussion the most effective approach for this topic?
• Would this benefit from thoughtful reflection before group discussion?

2. Structural Variety

Develop multiple collaboration formats beyond the default meeting. Different types of work require different environments for optimal thinking.

Options include:

• Asynchronous documentation (like Basecamp’s written updates)
• Digital canvases (like Miro’s collaborative boards)
• Maker spaces (physical environments for tactile collaboration)
• Walking meetings (movement-based discussions for creative thinking)
• Silent working sessions (co-working with focused individual contribution)

3. Essence Alignment

Design your collaboration methods to amplify your core differentiators. Your essence should inform not just what you create, but how you create it.

For example:

• If your essence involves meticulous craft (like Dyson), your collaboration should preserve deep focus on details
• If your essence involves radical transparency (like Monzo), your collaboration should make decision-making visible
• If your essence involves creative divergence (like IDEO), your collaboration should protect exploratory thinking

Practical Alternatives to Traditional Meetings

Let’s explore specific alternatives that preserve distinctiveness while enabling effective collaboration:

Asynchronous Documentation

When to use: Complex topics requiring deep thought, involving people across time zones, or when building institutional knowledge is important.

Examples:

• Basecamp’s written updates
• Amazon’s six-page memos
• GitLab’s handbook-first approach (which we touched on in Chapter 45)

Essence preservation: Allows for thoughtful expression of unique perspectives without social pressure. Creates space for divergent thinking before convergence.

Maker Spaces

When to use: Creative collaboration, physical product development, or when visual/spatial thinking is valuable.

Examples:

• Dyson’s prototyping labs
• IDEO’s collaborative spaces designed for specific types of creative work
• Brompton’s workshop environment where craftspeople collaborate around physical objects

Essence preservation: Enables tactile, visual communication that transcends meeting limitations and keeps craft at the centre.

Digital Canvases

When to use: Visual thinking, complex system design, or when spatial relationships between ideas matter.

Examples:

• Miro’s internal practices of collaborative whiteboarding
• Notion’s shared documents for team thinking
• Figma’s collaborative design approach

Essence preservation: Captures spatial thinking that gets flattened in linear meeting discussions, preserves visual expression of ideas.

The Expert Filter: When (Rarely) to Use Traditional Meetings

Despite their limitations, there are times when traditional meetings remain the right tool. Use this simple decision framework to determine when:

1. Does this genuinely need synchronous conversation?
2. Does this require everyone’s simultaneous attention?
3. Will this amplify or dilute our distinctive approach?

Only when all three conditions are met should you default to a traditional meeting format.

The Cost of Conformity: What’s at Stake

Every hour your team spends in a standard meeting format is an hour spent becoming more like your most boring competitor.

Think about it mathematically. If your team of eight people spends 10 hours weekly in traditional meetings, that’s 80 person-hours of conformity training each week. Over a year, that’s over 4,000 hours of practicing being generic.

What could those 4,000 hours create if channeled through collaboration methods that preserved and amplified your distinctiveness instead?

Campfire, Not Conference Room

If you’ve followed the thinking in this book about essence, positioning, gravity, and storytelling, you’ve invested significant energy in understanding what makes your company the obvious choice. Why would you then force that distinctive essence through the homogenizing filter of traditional meetings?

Traditional meetings are where distinctiveness goes to die, where essence gets diluted, and where gravitational pull weakens. Your meeting room is where your company’s personality goes to die.

But your collaboration doesn’t have to follow this path. By redesigning how your team works together, you can preserve and even amplify what makes you distinctive. Your collaboration methods should express and reinforce your essence, not erode it.

Take a hard look at your calendar for the next week. Each meeting is an opportunity to either strengthen or weaken what makes you distinctive. Which meetings will you transform? Which will you eliminate? And what will you create in their place?

Distinctive companies don’t abandon collaboration—they redesign it to amplify what makes them unique.

The most dangerous competitor to your distinctiveness isn’t in your market. It’s in your calendar. And it’s time to fight back.