Reduced Meeting Time by 100+ Hours by Elevating Strategic Focus

CORENTUS CLIENT CASES | EFFECTIVE TEAMING CASE STUDY | Reduced Meeting Time by 100+ Hours by Elevating Strategic Focus

Refocusing Senior Leaders on High-Impact Collaboration

The senior leadership team (SLT) of the largest division within a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization—home to over 9,000 employees—was feeling the strain of excessive meetings. The organization is known for its highly expert culture, with professionals across disciplines such as engineering, research, policy, and technology working on complex challenges of national importance. The SLT, composed of seasoned executives and senior leaders, found themselves in 5 to 6 hours of team meetings each week, yet they were not seeing the level of strategic progress or impact they expected. Their meetings had become tactical, reactive, and overly detailed—leaving little space for the bigger picture work the organization needed from them.

Clarifying the Objective: Less Time, More Value
Corentus was engaged to help the SLT reduce time spent in meetings while dramatically increasing the relevance and value of their time together. The aim was to optimize collaborative time and elevate the focus to strategy and vision—key responsibilities of a senior leadership team.

Analyzing the Work and Redesigning the Rhythm
Using the Work Types Chart, Corentus partnered with the SLT to conduct a full audit of their meeting content. The analysis revealed a clear pattern: most of their agenda items were tactical and operational in nature. Despite being the most senior leaders in the division, their meeting time was not being used for strategic or visionary thinking.

Corentus facilitated a shift by helping the team:

• Categorize all standing and ad hoc agenda items based on work type

• Reassign tactical and operational topics to the leaders directly accountable

• Prioritize high-level issues appropriate for SLT attention—such as strategic planning, budget allocation, change initiatives, succession planning, and board preparation

• Design new meeting agendas that reflected their strategic responsibilities

Results: Streamlined Time, Strategic Output
The SLT reduced meeting time from 5–6 hours to just 3 hours per week, saving over 100 hours annually. Meeting content shifted to fewer, higher-impact discussions focused on strategy, change, and long-term planning. A collaborative division-wide strategy was developed in half the expected time, with stronger alignment and engagement.

Importantly, the division CEO—previously handling strategy in a hub-and-spoke model—was able to significantly reduce his individual meeting load by bringing strategic work into the team setting. This shift built shared ownership, enhanced debate, and created broader leadership alignment.

Sustained Transformation and Organizational Recognition
The change became a new norm. By focusing on what only they could do together, the SLT not only improved how they worked—they significantly raised the quality and speed of their outcomes. Their success became a model across the organization, and the division’s CEO was ultimately named CEO of the entire organization—an outcome widely attributed to the increased cohesion, strategic clarity, and leadership alignment fostered through this engagement.