In a move hailed internally as a breakthrough in organizational efficiency, a mid-sized firm has announced the creation of a new recurring meeting whose sole purpose is to determine which of the company’s other meetings are unnecessary.

The Meeting Optimization Working Group, as it is formally known, will convene every Tuesday and Thursday morning to review the company’s calendar and identify gatherings that could, in the words of the founding charter, “more appropriately have been an email.”

“We recognized that we had a meeting problem,” explained one organizer, speaking during a pre-meeting alignment session held to prepare for the meeting. “So naturally we formed a group to address it. The group meets twice a week, plus a monthly steering committee, plus a quarterly retrospective.”

Early sessions have proven productive, according to attendees, who report that the group has already identified seventeen meetings that should be eliminated. The group has also, in the course of its work, spawned four sub-meetings, two task forces, and a standing subcommittee to review the findings of the standing subcommittee.

Employees have responded with cautious enthusiasm. “I was spending nearly thirty hours a week in meetings,” said one staff member. “Now I spend twenty-eight hours in meetings and two hours in the meeting about reducing meetings. It’s a net improvement, technically.”

The group’s methodology involves a rigorous evaluation framework in which each meeting is scored across nine dimensions, including necessity, attendance overlap, and what the charter terms “agenda density.” Meetings scoring below a defined threshold are flagged for review in a subsequent meeting, where their fate is decided by consensus, which requires, on average, three additional meetings to reach.

A spokesperson confirmed that the initiative has already yielded measurable results. “We’ve reduced our total meeting hours by twelve percent,” they said, “though we should note that figure excludes the meetings of the Meeting Optimization Working Group itself, which are considered foundational infrastructure and therefore exempt from review.”

The group’s success has attracted attention from other departments, several of which have requested meetings to learn how to establish their own meeting-reduction meetings. A cross-functional meeting to coordinate these requests is being scheduled, pending the availability of a conference room, all of which are currently booked.

Looking ahead, organizers say the group is considering an ambitious next phase: a meeting to evaluate whether the Meeting Optimization Working Group is itself necessary. The proposal has been tabled, however, until the group can find a time that works for everyone.