Most leaders know meetings are broken. What’s harder to admit is that we keep reinforcing the system that makes them that way.

Calendars are full. Teams are exhausted. And yet, meetings continue to multiply. Not because they work, but because they signal work.

In this episode, Rebecca Hinds challenges the idea that meetings are just a scheduling problem. She reframes them as a deeper organizational issue rooted in visibility, status, and outdated ways of measuring value.

You’ll hear why meetings often aren’t the root problem, but the most visible symptom. Why hybrid work and AI haven’t fixed collaboration, and in many cases have made it worse. And what it actually looks like to design meetings and workflows with intention, not habit.

For HR leaders, this conversation is a wake-up call. Not just to reduce meetings, but to rethink how work itself is defined, measured, and experienced.

Because if we don’t change it deliberately, AI will simply help us do more of what isn’t working.

About our guest
Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert in organizational behavior who works with companies navigating the challenges of modern work. She founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, where she bridges the gap between academic research and real organizational practice. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. She is also an instructor for CNBC's Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work, and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[~12:50] Check-In: Rebecca's best meeting ever

[~19:40] Why meetings got worse after the pandemic

[~22:10] Visibility bias: why we equate busyness with value

[~24:45] The WWII sabotage manual

[~27:00] The $1.4 trillion problem

[~30:10] Meetings as your most expensive, overlooked product

[~35:45] "Process is a proxy"

[~36:00] Where AI helps and where it hurts meetings

[~38:30] The brainstorming debate: to AI or not to AI?

[~43:40] One tip for HR leaders: where to start

[~45:05] It's okay to cancel

Resources & Links

• 📘 Book: Your Best Meeting Ever by Rebecca Hinds
• 🌐 Website: rebeccahinds.com
• 🔬 Work AI Institute: workai.institute
• 💼 LinkedIn: Rebecca Hinds
• 📺 CNBC Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work

Stay connected with foHRsight

• Sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight
• Follow us on LinkedIn:
  • Mark Edgar
  • Naomi Titleman Colla
  • future foHRward
• Follow us on Instagram

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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What happens when smart, capable teams keep having meetings, but nothing really moves?

In this episode, Gustavo Razzetti joins Naomi Titleman to unpack the hidden cost of the conversations teams avoid. He argues that many workplace breakdowns are not caused by weak strategy or lack of talent, but by “conversational debt” that builds when people stay silent, rush alignment, blame each other, or perform agreement they do not actually feel.

For HR leaders, this tension is especially familiar. You can invest in engagement, communication, and psychological safety, but still find teams stuck in circular meetings, unresolved friction, and unspoken resentment. This conversation helps name what is really happening underneath those patterns and offers a more useful lens for moving teams forward.

Gustavo shares why groupthink is often the hardest dysfunction to spot, why silence is not the same as alignment, and why many employees stop speaking up not only because they are afraid, but because they no longer believe it will make a difference. He also introduces the idea of “forward talk” — conversations that address the real issue and focus on the future — and explains what HR leaders can do to build teams that disagree well, commit clearly, and stop carrying avoidable relational and operational drag.

About our guest
Gustavo Razzetti is a culture design consultant, speaker, and the CEO of Fearless Culture. He has facilitated more than 1,500 workshops with teams at companies including Microsoft, Mars, Merck, Globant, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and his work focuses on helping organizations build healthier, more honest team cultures.

Connect with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:

• Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
• Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
• future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/
• Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

Connect with Gustavo

• Website: GustavoRazzetti.com
• LinkedIn: Search Gustavo Razzetti (with double Z, double T)

About Gustavo's Book
📗 Forward Talk by Gustavo Razzetti Available for pre-order now | Publishing May 5th

The book includes a Conversational Debt Quiz to help teams identify where alignment, belonging, or collaboration gaps are hitting hardest — plus tools and exercises to start shifting team behavior.

Win a Copy!
Post about this episode and tag Naomi Titleman, Gustavo Razzetti, and/or future foHRward to be eligible to win a copy of Forward Talk.

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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Something feels off.

A leader who used to be effective is becoming controlling. A team that used to work well together is suddenly tense. Conversations are getting sharper, more personal, more certain.

And yet, the numbers still look fine.

For many HR leaders, this is a familiar and frustrating position. You can feel the shift early, but by the time it’s acknowledged, the conversation has already turned into a performance issue. The system pressure has already been translated into a judgment about the person.

In this episode, Ned Eustace introduces a different way to understand what’s happening underneath those moments. He explains how leadership strain builds under pressure, how organizations unconsciously convert that pressure into capability judgments, and why that shift makes it harder to intervene effectively.

More importantly, this conversation offers a practical way forward. It helps HR leaders slow down that conversion, ask better questions, and create space for a more accurate diagnosis before action is taken.

If you’ve ever had the sense that something was coming before anyone else could see it, this episode will help you trust that signal and know what to do with it.

About our guest
Ned Eustace works with senior leaders navigating sustained pressure in environments of growth, transformation, and integration. His work focuses on how leadership strain shows up early, often before traditional performance signals, and how organizations can respond without defaulting to individual blame. He partners closely with HR and executive teams to help them interpret system signals and intervene with clarity.

To go deeper on this topic: https://hbleaders.com/pressure-gap-leadership-strain

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:

• Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
• Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
• future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram:

• www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show