Why Meetings Are a System Design Problem

Why Meetings Are a System Design Problem

From Digital HR Leaders with David Green by David Green

May 26, 2026 · 56 min · Season 54 · Episode 275

About this episode

David Green discusses the design and effectiveness of meetings with Rebecca Hinds, exploring concepts like meeting debt and the impact of AI on collaboration.

Are your meetings actually working? Or has your calendar just become a system nobody knows how to switch off?   In this episode, David Green is joined by  Rebecca Hinds , Stanford-trained organisational researcher, Head of the Work AI Institute at Glean, and author of  Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done .   In this conversation, David and Rebecca discuss:  Why organisations should treat meetings as a product, and what that actually means in practice  The concept of meeting debt, and why calendars accumulate bloat in the same way codebases accumulate technical debt  What a 48-hour calendar cleanse involves, and what typically happens when organisations rebuild their calendars from scratch  The patterns that show up most consistently when mapping how work actually moves between teams  How AI is being used to improve meetings, and the ways it can make dysfunctional meeting culture worse  What the conversation looks like in the room when CHROs start rethinking collaboration for the AI era  This episode is sponsored by TechWolf. &nbsp…

People in this episode

Host: David Green

Guest: Rebecca Hinds

Topics covered

  • meetings
  • system design
  • organizational research
  • AI in work
  • collaboration
  • meeting culture

Keywords

  • meetings
  • system design
  • meeting debt
  • AI collaboration
  • organizational research
  • calendar management
  • work patterns

Sponsors

TechWolf

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Glean, HSBC, AMD, T-Mobile, GSK, ServiceNow, Pfizer

Products: Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done

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