What If Meetings Were Forbidden?
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One Strange Question. A New Possibility.
AIYING — Accomplishing with AI
Six Meetings. One Working Day. Almost No Progress.
Monday, 9:00 AM.
Ananya, a project manager, joins her first meeting.
The team discusses progress, reviews pending tasks and identifies issues requiring attention.
At 11:00 AM, she joins another meeting to report the same progress to senior management.
At 2:00 PM, everyone gathers to prepare for tomorrow's project review.
By 5:30 PM, Ananya has attended six meetings.
Her calendar is full.
Her project work is still waiting.
She wonders:
“How can I manage my meetings more efficiently?”
Then comes a surprising proposition.
PO: What if nobody were allowed to attend meetings?
Ridiculous?
Perhaps.
But that is precisely where lateral thinking begins.
The PO Thinking Lab
Step 1 — Recognize the Problem
Ananya initially believes she has a time-management problem.
She considers shorter meetings, better agendas and stricter time limits.
These might help.
But they all assume something important:
The meetings themselves are necessary.
What if that assumption deserves examination?
Step 2 — Expose the Hidden Assumption
We often associate meetings with collaboration.
We assume that to share information, coordinate work or make decisions, people must gather at the same time.
But are all these activities fundamentally the same?
Consider four common reasons for meetings:
Sharing information
Making decisions
Solving problems
Building relationships
Each serves a different purpose.
Yet organizations frequently use the same mechanism—a meeting—for all four.
The hidden assumption: Collaboration requires meetings.
Step 3 — Introduce the PO Provocation
Edward de Bono introduced PO as a tool for provocative thinking.
Instead of immediately judging whether an idea is right or wrong, we temporarily use it to explore possibilities.
Our provocation is:
PO: Attending meetings is forbidden.
This is not a recommendation to eliminate all meetings.
It is an intentionally unreasonable proposition designed to disrupt habitual thinking.
For a moment, imagine that Ananya's organization cannot hold meetings.
What would happen?
Step 4 — Move From the Impossible to New Possibilities
This is the most important stage.
We do not reject the provocation.
We explore its consequences.
Possibility A — Information without meetings
If people cannot gather to report progress, they must find another way to make progress visible.
Perhaps a shared project dashboard could show completed work, blockers, decisions and next steps.
The emerging principle:
Information should be available when needed, not only when a meeting takes place.
Possibility B — Decisions without unnecessary attendance
If meetings are unavailable, decisions cannot depend on gathering everyone.
Perhaps each decision could have a clearly identified owner, required inputs and a deadline.
The emerging principle:
Decision-making needs clarity of authority, not necessarily a room full of people.
Possibility C — Problems that demand real collaboration
Some problems involve uncertainty, competing perspectives or complex trade-offs.
Without routine meetings, these situations become more visible.
People might discover that certain conversations are genuinely valuable and deserve focused attention.
The emerging principle:
Meet when interaction creates value that other methods cannot provide.
Possibility D — Collaboration without constant interruption
If routine meetings disappear, professionals gain longer periods for focused work.
But they also need reliable ways to ask questions, raise concerns and coordinate dependencies.
The emerging principle:
Collaboration should support productive work, not continually interrupt it.
Step 5 — Discover the Aha Moment
Ananya realizes something important.
Her original question was:
“How can I manage my meetings more efficiently?”
Now she asks:
“Which outcomes actually require a meeting?”
That is the thinking shift.
The discovery is not that meetings are bad.
It is that meetings are one possible mechanism for collaboration—not collaboration itself.
The goal is to design the most appropriate way to achieve each outcome.
Step 6 — Accomplish: The One-Week PO Experiment
Choose one recurring status meeting.
For one week, replace it with a simple written update containing:
Progress since the last update
Current blockers
Decisions required
Responsible owners and deadlines
Allow team members to request a focused discussion when a problem genuinely requires interaction.
At the end of the week, evaluate:
Was information equally or more accessible?
Were decisions made on time?
Did team members gain useful focus time?
Did any communication problems emerge?
Should the original meeting return, change or disappear?
The purpose is not to prove that meetings are unnecessary. It is to discover which forms of collaboration work best.
Try the PO Thinking Lab With AI
AI can help us explore provocative ideas without replacing human judgment.
Copy this prompt into ChatGPT:
PO Thinking Partner Prompt
"Act as PO, my lateral-thinking companion, using Edward de Bono's approach.
I want to challenge the assumption that effective collaboration requires meetings.
Start with this provocation: 'Attending meetings is forbidden.'
Do not immediately offer conventional productivity advice.
First, help me identify the assumptions behind our existing meeting practices.
Next, guide me through the consequences of the provocation. Ask what would happen to information sharing, decision-making, problem-solving and relationships.
Help me extract useful principles from those consequences.
Then generate at least three alternative ways of collaborating.
Finally, help me design a realistic one-week experiment with measurable outcomes.
Ask questions throughout so I can make the discoveries and decisions myself."
Your PO Challenge
Imagine your organization announces:
“For the next seven days, nobody may attend a meeting.”
What would stop working?
What might work better?
And what entirely new way of collaborating might emerge?
Don't immediately search for the correct answer.
Explore the possibilities.
Share your most surprising discovery in the comments.
About PO Prompts
PO Prompts is a series exploring how surprising provocations, human stories and deliberate lateral thinking can reveal possibilities that conventional problem-solving may overlook.
Inspired by Edward de Bono's PO approach, each episode begins with a familiar challenge and invites readers to think beyond established assumptions.
AI serves as a thinking partner—helping us question, explore, experiment and learn.
PO Prompts
One Strange Question. A New Possibility.
AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.
