The common failure of "pre-read" meetings is that attendees don't do the reading. Atlassian, like Amazon, solves this by starting decision-making meetings with a dedicated, silent period where everyone reads the context document together. This guarantees shared context and makes the subsequent discussion far more effective.

High-performing remote teams exhibit "bursty" collaboration—short, intense periods of interaction followed by deep work. To enable this, teams should cancel recurring meetings and instead establish shared "collaboration hours" where everyone is available for ad-hoc problem-solving and spontaneous discussion.

To break down natural information silos in hierarchies, leaders must flip the cultural default from punishing unapproved sharing to demanding proactive oversharing. The new rule is: "You are responsible for informing other people." This creates a shared context that enables decentralized, autonomous decision-making.

The first step to better meetings is asking "should we have this meeting at all?" By eliminating purely informational meetings, you prevent the formation of norms like disengagement and silence. This makes it more likely that when a collaborative meeting is necessary, team members will actively participate.

Loom's internal research found that managers sharing weekly video updates, rather than text-based ones, resulted in a 2x increase in team connection. This practice cascades information effectively, models time empathy, and ensures employees feel more recognized and clear on their goals.

Mandating new processes, like reducing meetings, is ineffective if the collective beliefs driving old behaviors (e.g., lack of trust) are not addressed. To make change stick, leaders must first surface, discuss, and realign the team's shared assumptions to support the new structure.

Status update meetings are a major productivity drain. Replace them with asynchronous videos (e.g., Loom). This method is more efficient, allowing people to consume updates on their own time. It also conveys more signal—tone, emphasis, and personality—than a written update, fostering better connection on distributed teams.

Instead of using meetings for context-setting, Loom’s team sends a required 'pre-watch' video walkthrough of the strategy. This forces stakeholders to arrive with full context, allowing the live meeting to be shorter and entirely focused on critique, asking clarifying questions, and making decisions.