Meeting Playbook
To collaborate effectively in a hybrid working environment and across time zones, we must reevaluate our meeting culture. While some meetings are necessary, others can be replaced by using collaboration tools such as Asana, Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, and the Google Suite. Our Meeting Playbook is designed to help our global team manage their schedules and deliver their best work as efficiently as possible.
Meeting Best Practices
The first step in transforming our meeting culture is “car-washing” our existing recurring meetings. We ask everyone to go through their calendars to decide within their teams:
Which meetings are helpful and necessary.
If the number of participants can be reduced.
If the meeting can be shifted to different modes of collaboration.
This should be a regular practice, taking place at least once a quarter.
N.B. Since the calendars are public to anyone in Groupon, please consider marking any sensitive and/or confidential events as private.
Meeting Best Practices
Meetings that remain should be 2 types:
Standups - 15 min updates for a larger group to keep them all informed and aligned, it should not be simple status report. Read more on Standup best practices here.
Problem solving meetings - 30-60 min, small group of up to 6 people discussing a specific problem.
Be mindful of timezones and optimal cross market collaboration windows;
EMEA / APAC - 7am CET / 10am UAE / 11:30am IND / 5pm AU - 9am CET / 12pm UAE / 1:30pm IND / 7pm AU
NORAM / EMEA - 3:30pm CET / 8:30am CT - 7pm CET / 12pm CT
To give everyone a chance to meaningfully contribute, Meeting owners should provide the following content in the calendar invite at least 24 hours in advance:
A 300-word problem statement (setting out the issue the meeting is seeking to resolve).
A clear agenda (include Asana Link or Gdoc link in the invite) with how the meeting will arrive at a solution available.
Defined Roles: who is leading/who is taking notes.
For teams that are on Asana, a separate project should be set up for every recurring 1:1 or team meeting (see Asana 121 guide and feel free to use this template) with tasks for each instance to serve this purpose. Teams who are not on Asana should use the Meeting Notes function in Google Docs.
As your project moves forward, you should ideally decrease the frequency of your meetings to match problem solving necessary to move ahead.
Finish the meeting with a quick summary, accountabilities and deadlines, then link your meeting notes (Gdoc) file in Asana/Jira where participants can read through all the meeting summaries in a single file by date of the meeting.
Plan for shorter meetings - Aim for 25 minutes in the case of 30 min. meetings, 50 mins. in the case of 60 min. meetings
If invitees don’t think they add value, they are free to reject the invite.
Meeting "Don'ts"
Don’t hold “status update meetings”: Long meetings (15min+) with many participants where Jira / Asana / Presentation updates are read.
We encourage you not to attend status update meetings, but rather push the project lead to keep Jira/Asana updated.
Don’t invite people that are not critical, rather have a quick 1-2-1 follow up or get them aligned via your meeting notes/agenda.
Don’t attend meetings without an agenda and clear expectations of your contribution.
Vacation and Out-of-Office Guidelines
The guidelines cover email auto-reply, calendar events, and Asana out-of-office settings, and it emphasizes the importance of listing deputies to facilitate smooth workflow continuation.
Email Auto Reply
When going on vacation, you should set up an email auto-reply to inform senders about your absence and provide an estimated return date.
The auto-reply message should include the names and contact information of designated deputies who can handle urgent matters in your absence.
You are encouraged to provide alternative points of contact for non-urgent inquiries, such as departmental email addresses.
Calendar Event with Out-of-Office
Before going on vacation, you should create a calendar event indicating your out-of-office dates.
In the calendar event description, you should mention the names and contact details of your deputies for any work-related emergencies that may arise during your absence.
You are advised to update the calendar event if there are any changes to your return date or delegated responsibilities.
Asana Out-of-Office Setting
You should activate the out-of-office setting in Asana when going on vacation to communicate your unavailability to team members.
In the out-of-office notification, you should include the names and roles of your deputies, ensuring that the team knows who to contact for time-sensitive matters.
Upon returning, you should disable the out-of-office setting to indicate your availability for tasks and projects.