3. How 1:1 Meetings Are Messing Up Your Culture

At Work with The Ready

1:1s (or one-on-ones) are a ubiquitous part of our daily working lives. These two-person meetings (a manager + a direct report = a classic 1:1) are meant to be a space for diving into individual challenges, fostering trust, building stronger relationships, and providing a forum for feedback and recognition. When designed with intention, they can be great.

But at some point, 1:1s jumped the shark. Today, we see more and more companies with an overwhelming “1:1 culture,” where calendars are packed with a million two-person meetings (on top of lots of other meetings), leaving precious little time to get work done. Worse still, most 1:1s include our worst meeting habits: over-indexing on status updates, information hoarding, and bureaucratic theater. What gives?

In this episode of At Work with The Ready, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin meet one-on-one (see what we did there?) to explore why 1:1 cultures take hold in organizations, the cost that comes with doing them poorly, how to rely on them less, and how to start making the ones you do keep count.

Mentioned references:

• “Tear and share roll”
• “op rhythm”: BNW Ep. 118
• A Beautiful Mind, movie from 2001
• “default stack of pancakes” : At Work With The Ready Ep. 2
• “Action Meeting”: BNW Ep. 80 with Sam Spurlin
• “retrospectives”: BNW Ep. 10 with Jordan Husney
• “Donut meetings”
• “Ali’s 1:1 article”
• “Lean coffee/OS Coffee”: BNW Ep. 144

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