Auckland Agency Declares 'No Meetings Week', Accidentally Has Most Productive Week Since 2013
In what was initially intended as a performative act of culture-building, Auckland-based creative agency Helvetica & Sons announced a "No Meetings Week" on Monday. By Friday, they'd accidentally delivered nine campaigns, two brand strategies, and fixed the office fridge.
The initiative, originally brainstormed during a nine-person meeting about how to reduce meetings, was meant to promote mindfulness and allow creatives to find their flow. Instead, staff simply got on with their work so efficiently that several clients called HR to ask if the agency had been acquired by Germans.
“We thought people would use the time to reflect and plan,” said agency Workflow Director, Trenton Rayne, visibly sweating into his oat latte. “But by Tuesday morning, someone had already redesigned the client portal, reshot the biscuit ad campaign, and built a pitch deck in Keynote without asking for a creative alignment sync-up.”
Jubilation briefly turned to panic on Wednesday when senior staff realised nobody had filled in the timesheets. "We estimate we lost fourteen hours trying to remember what we did with all our time," confessed Account Manager, Jess Lin. "Turns out, when you remove meetings, time becomes this freaky, free-flowing thing. Like soda water with no bottle."
Despite the immediate success, management has confirmed meetings will return next week, citing concerns that without them, no one remembers who’s line-managing who, and no one has silently judged a colleague’s headphone choice since Monday.
The initiative, originally brainstormed during a nine-person meeting about how to reduce meetings, was meant to promote mindfulness and allow creatives to find their flow. Instead, staff simply got on with their work so efficiently that several clients called HR to ask if the agency had been acquired by Germans.
“We thought people would use the time to reflect and plan,” said agency Workflow Director, Trenton Rayne, visibly sweating into his oat latte. “But by Tuesday morning, someone had already redesigned the client portal, reshot the biscuit ad campaign, and built a pitch deck in Keynote without asking for a creative alignment sync-up.”
Jubilation briefly turned to panic on Wednesday when senior staff realised nobody had filled in the timesheets. "We estimate we lost fourteen hours trying to remember what we did with all our time," confessed Account Manager, Jess Lin. "Turns out, when you remove meetings, time becomes this freaky, free-flowing thing. Like soda water with no bottle."
Despite the immediate success, management has confirmed meetings will return next week, citing concerns that without them, no one remembers who’s line-managing who, and no one has silently judged a colleague’s headphone choice since Monday.