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Three leaders cut recurring meetings; one counted the hours

Cem Gorer
Cem Gorer

Kihon Labs daily note: Time management

Siemens' chief executive, Roland Busch, holds no recurring meetings with his direct reports, he told Business Insider, as Fortune reported on 17 August 2026. "You come to me whenever you need me," he said. "It could be five times a week or once a month."

Instagram's head, Adam Mosseri, told his staff in a memo that Business Insider obtained and published on 1 December 2025: "Every six months, we'll cancel all recurring meetings and only re-add the ones that are absolutely necessary."

Shopify did it first, and counted. On 3 January 2023 its operating chief, Kaz Nejatian, told employees by email that every recurring meeting with more than two people was ending, Fortune reported. A spokesperson put the first cut at 10,000 events and 76,500 hours.

Three leaders took the same decision about hours, and only one has published what the hours came to. That is a time-management problem: where a week goes, and who measures it.

Quote from Kaz Nejatian, Shopify's chief operating officer, as quoted by NPR on 15 February 2023: We deleted 322,000 hours of meetings.
Hours, not value. The sentence gives the hours removed. It does not say what people did with them, which is the only number that pays.

The short version

Shopify removed every recurring meeting of three or more people in January 2023 and later measured 14% less meeting time per person.

Instagram's memo of December 2025 promises the same cancellation every six months, and no hours have been published.

Siemens' CEO holds no recurring meetings with his direct reports; the habit is his own, and there is no count.

Three decisions, one measurement

Shopify's rules were specific. Fortune's report of 3 January 2023 lists no events on Wednesdays, big meetings only on Thursdays, and a wait of at least two weeks before anything goes back. NPR reported on 15 February 2023 that a bot had purged the calendars of about 10,000 employees, all remote.

Then came the count.

Shopify's finance chief, Jeff Hoffmeister, said in a Fortune interview published on 14 July 2023: "At the start of 2023, we canceled 12,000 calendar series and events and reinstated 'no meeting Wednesdays.'" The company projected 322,000 hours cut for the whole of 2023. Average time per person in meetings was down 14% in the first five months against 2022.

A calculator in the calendar prices a 30-minute meeting of three at $700 to $1,600, about €620 to €1,400. Shopify's 2023 revenue was $7.1 billion, about €6.3 billion, up 26%.

Since then, a letter of 4 May 2023 made the company smaller by about 20%, and Nejatian's move to run Opendoor was announced in September 2025. No later meeting count has been published.

Instagram's memo, titled "Building a Winning Culture in 2026", gives rules and no numbers. Mosseri supports one-to-ones every two weeks by default, and staff may decline meetings in their focus blocks. The same memo calls US staff with assigned desks back to the office five days a week from 2 February 2026.

How many series were cancelled, and whether the first six-month reset has happened, is not published.

Busch's practice is personal. "Because I value efficiency, I don't have recurring meetings with my direct reports," he said. Siemens had 318,000 employees at 30 September 2025 and revenue of €78.9 billion in fiscal 2025, by its earnings release of 13 November 2025.

The release says nothing about meetings, and how far the habit reaches below the board is not stated.

Three decisions about recurring meetings, one measured result. Shopify, January 2023: 76,500 hours. February 2023: 322,000 hours. July 2023: time per person in meetings down 14%. 2023 revenue: $7.1 billion. Instagram, December 2025: no count. Siemens' CEO, August 2026: no count.
One count in three. Shopify's 14% is the only measured result. The other two are a promise and a personal habit, with no hours attached.

What a cancelled series does to a week

Take one weekly review in your own team: 30 minutes, six people. That is three hours of your week, about 140 a year.

At Shopify the bot deleted it in January. The owner waited two weeks, then re-added it only if it was "really, really critical", as NPR reported employees were told. Nejatian's stated aim was to "change the default answer from yes to no".

Instagram's version repeats that reset every six months. Busch's version replaces the series with an open door.

In all three, the same thing happens next: 140 hours a year open up on six calendars.

On my reading from outside, those hours go one of three ways: to customer work, to a new meeting with a new name, or to mail and admin. None of the three companies has published which.

Gartner research, reported by DestinationCRM on 10 July 2026, finds AI tools save sellers 4.8 hours a week, and 72% of sales organisations report low reinvestment of that time in high-value work. A freed hour and a saved hour behave the same way.

One recurring meeting, from purge to what fills the hours. Purge: a bot removes every recurring meeting of three or more people. Wait: nothing goes back for two weeks. Re-add: only if really critical. Count: meeting time per person down 14% at Shopify. Fill: customer work, a new meeting or admin.
The fifth step is the money. Shopify described the first four and measured one. None of the three has published what filled the hours.

The cause is how your week is allotted, and who decides what a standing hour must produce. The symptoms are hours in meetings that decide nothing, and work prepared twice for a deck.

The bill is what did not happen in those hours, a renewal not called or a quote not sent, priced at the margin the hour should have carried.

The bill, in the company's own units

Shopify's 322,000 hours across about 10,000 people is 32 hours per person a year, four working days each.

Its 2023 gross profit was $3.5 billion, about €3.1 billion. Over 10,000 people and 1,800 hours each, an hour carries about $194 of margin, about €170. The 1,800-hour year is my placeholder; the rest are Shopify's numbers.

So the freed hours are worth about $63 million a year, roughly €56 million, if every one goes to merchant work. If half of them fill with new meetings and mail instead, my placeholder from the Gartner pattern, the other half is the bill: about €28 million of hours freed and spent on nothing a customer pays for.

You may object: "Those meetings did work; cancelling them costs more than it saves." Shopify measured: time per person fell 14%, and its finance chief said his own calendar shrank. The measurement is the answer, not the purge.

What this does not establish

I would not conclude that fewer recurring meetings raised output at any of the three. Nejatian projected 18% more finished projects for 2023, and Shopify has not reported whether that arrived; Instagram and Siemens have published no number at all.

What would settle it is a measurement: meeting hours by role before and after a cut, and what filled the freed hours, read 90 days later.

Where Kihon stands

I read Shopify's 14% as the only number of the three a CFO can use, and the question it leaves, what filled the hours, as the one Kihon counts. We price a commercial team's hours at the margin they should carry and ask of each freed hour where it went.

That count, hours in recurring meetings by role and what fills the calendar after a cut, is what the Diagnosis does in your own numbers. The same count fits a commercial team of forty, where one weekly review is a bigger share of the week.

If a calendar purge is on your list, thirty minutes on your own numbers is where we would begin.

One thing to try this week

  1. Count the hours each role in your commercial team spends in recurring internal meetings this week.
  2. Price those hours at the margin an hour of that role should carry, never at salary.
  3. Mark, ninety days after any cut, what filled the freed hours: customers, admin or new meetings.

Three questions to ask

Why cancel every series instead of trimming the list?

Because trimming leaves the default at yes. Shopify moved it to no with a two-week wait and let owners bring a series back only if it was critical.

What did Shopify's count show?

14% less time per person in meetings in the first five months of 2023, and about 26% less on Wednesdays. The 322,000 hours was a projection for the year, and I found no later result.

Should you copy Busch and drop your one-to-ones?

Only with a count. His practice covers his own direct reports and comes with an open door. On my reading, below the board a cancelled one-to-one with no open door is a lost handoff, and nothing in the sources prices that.

Sources

Your turn: when your commercial team last freed hours from its calendar, who measured what filled them? Write to me at cemgorer@kihonlabs.com, or answer on LinkedIn. I read every reply.

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