Robin Schooling

It’s Not a Meeting, It’s a Huddle! (and we still hate it)

Why does everyone hate work meetings?

We take the hatred and meeting fatigue for granted, don’t we? It’s the basis of half the workplace memes on Instagram and three-quarters of the jokes in any decent office sitcom. The mere utterance of the cliche “a meeting that could’ve been an email” is guaranteed to earn a knowing nod from anyone who’s ever worn a lanyard or opened a Zoom invite.

Many of us have tried to fix it … mostly by rebranding; changing the language in hopes of changing the experience.

“It’s not a meeting – it’s a chat!” (A huddle. A regroup. A quick sync. A touchpoint. A round-up. A stand-up.)

But no matter what we call it, a badly run meeting is still a badly run meeting. If we’re gathering to restate what was in an email, read a dashboard aloud, or schedule yet another meeting … we’ve lost the plot.

Why We Hate Them (sometimes with good reason)

They eat up time and rarely give it back
They lack purpose, structure, or clarity
They exist because “we always have a Thursday check-in”
They drift, spiral, or become low-key turf wars
They replace actual progress with performative presence

No one hates a meeting that solves a problem or serves a purpose. What we hate are the ones that fill time not needs – and somehow spawn three more meetings in their wake.

But Meetings Still Matter

But – and this is important – even bad meetings can still serve a purpose. A good purpose. Meetings anchor a team and align a group. They give people a place to read the room, voice concern, ask for help, or just feel slightly less alone in the workplace.

Even a five-minute check-in can make a difference when the alternative is sending messages into the void and hoping someone’s paying attention. Humans are relational. Even at work. Especially at work.

Meetings (when done right) are the connective tissue of a team. They give us rhythm, an opportunity to reset, and sometimes a place to laugh at someone’s dog getting the zoomies just slightly off camera.

But we can still improve our meetings. Think about:

Being honest about what it is. If it’s an info dump, send it in writing. If it’s a brainstorm, label it that way. If it’s just to touch base, ask if an update in a Teams Channel would suffice.
Defaulting to less. Fewer people. Less time. Minimal handouts. The more you constrain the shape, the sharper the purpose becomes.
Starting and ending with clarity. What are we here to do? What decisions must we make? What’s next?
Making space for real connection. Leave a little room for human moments and connecting. Not “forced” fun and games. Just humanity.

I’m sure we’ll keep calling them syncs and stand-ups and round-ups. I have a standing Monday meeting with a colleague that I’ve labeled “Hullabaloo” in our calendars, and I have no desire to change the name.

But maybe what matters isn’t the name. It’s whether we respect the time, the purpose, and the people in the room.

Call it whatever you want. Just don’t make it pointless.

*****

Boho HR: Unconventional by Design

The other day, as I was fastening a floaty scarf onto the handle of my over-sized slouchy handbag, I thought to myself “I feel positively bohemian!” Naturally, this association with boho-chic popped into my brain with an accompanying vision of the Olsen twins.

But bohemianism, as a social and cultural movement, is about much more than fashion or home décor. Originating from the French bohème, the term was originally used to describe non-traditional lifestyles in the mid 19^th-century, especially of artists, writers, journalists, musicians and actors in major European cities.

Often portrayed as embracing free love, frugality, and simple living, a bohemian (informally referred to as “boho”), is someone with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with minimal regard for conventional rules of behavior.

Are there HR bohemians? Is Boho-chic HR a thing? Can it be? And what, pray tell, might that look like?

The Belief System

Boho HR is for those who believe that HR should be more about people and less about policy. HR where we have more improvisation and less institutional script. Flexible, eclectic, and intuitive, it trusts good judgment over rigid rules. It’s not anti-structure – it’s pro-human.

Boho HR is when you believe:

The annual performance review isn’t sacred.
Hiring can be relational, not transactional.
Employee experience is a mood and a rhythm – not just a NPS.

The Look

Boho HR is like Ella Emhoff who refuses to shave her armpits which has led her to become the representation and symbol, to many, of the end of civilization. The discomfort isn’t about her – it’s about the unspoken rules she refuses to follow.

Boho HR makes people squirm in the same way. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It means it’s visible.

Boho HR doesn’t wear a lanyard and probably makes the people who love 5-page Dress Code policies extraordinarily uncomfortable. It’s HR that smells a little like cedar and maybe burns sage at the end of a hard week. And no, that doesn’t mean it’s soft. It means it’s considered. It means it’s built for people who are motivated, multi-layered, and real.

When you’re the only one painting outside the lines, some people will assume you don’t know how to draw. That’s the cost. But the payoff is a day-today existence that makes you feel ALIVE again.

The Design

Boho HR is intentional – not accidental. It’s about rejecting cookie-cutter systems in favor of something more fluid and more human. It’s not about being different for the sake of being different though; it’s about being honest about what truly serves people – and calling out what doesn’t.

Choosing the Boho path means letting go of a certain kind of corporate validation. Boho HR doesn’t win awards for compliance efficiency. It doesn’t post perfectly timed LinkedIn thought leadership (3 times per week! Timed for maximum engagement!!) posts. Boho HR is the one likely to say “We decided not to rank people this year,” or “We rewrote the handbook in plain language.”

Boho HR might get polite smiles in a room full of traditionalists while being told “that’s interesting” … in a tone that feels more condescending than curious.

The Style

Sometimes, if you’re a Boho HR professional, you’ll be the only HR pro you know who isn’t benchmarking everything. You’ll want to tell a story when everyone else is citing data. You’ll want to ask how it feels before someone else asks how it performs.

And you’ll wonder if you’re the weird one.

You’re not.

You’re just building from a different center.

You’re creating HR practices that flow like a good playlist and settle into your soul like a deep breath. Practices that honor art and imperfection. Systems that support people rather than stifle them.

HR can look like a painting. Or a poem. Or a floaty, pre-Raphaelite gauzy top paired with worn-in leather boots and a top hat.

That’s Boho HR. And if you’re out there doing it? Keep on keeping on.

*****

How Bad Business Processes Break Good People

We’ve all seen it.

A well-intentioned, talented, motivated employee slowly ground down by an inflexible process that was last updated during the Bush administration. (The first one.)

They’re not underperforming. They’re trying to navigate an obstacle course built out of unclear handoffs, redundant approvals, and systems that require three logins, a PDF, and a prayer.

A bad process doesn’t just waste time. It breaks people.

W. Edwards Deming said it best: “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” And the thing is, most systems don’t start bad. They become bad. Through layering. Through patchwork. Through a slow drift away from purpose and clarity.

Processes turn into policies. Flexibility turns into rules. And before you know it, your organization is enforcing steps no one can explain – except to say “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

What Makes a Process Bad?

It’s inflexible. There’s no room for judgment, nuance, or change. If someone dares to deviate, the process breaks – or they get blamed.
It’s bloated. Layers on top of layers. Approvals stacked like pancakes. Half of it is redundant, the other half is unclear.
It’s a power move. Built more for control than clarity. The goal isn’t efficiency – it’s enforcement.
It’s not designed for how people actually work. It ignores real timelines, real tools, and the actual sequence of work. It was built in a vacuum and lives there still.
It doesn’t get reviewed. No one owns it. No one questions it. It just… exists. Like office plants no one waters.

Fix the System, Don’t Blame the Person

The impulse to point fingers at individuals is strong. It feels easier than questioning structure. But if we want to retain good people – and get good work – then the structure has to hold up.

This means:

Auditing workflows regularly (not just when something breaks)
Asking the people who actually use the process what slows them down
Removing unnecessary friction instead of celebrating it as “rigor”
Giving managers room to adapt and apply discretion

People want to do good work. They want to contribute. They want to solve problems. But they can’t do that if the very system they’re operating in is stacked against them.

Deming’s point wasn’t that people don’t matter. It’s that blaming individuals for systemic failure is lazy leadership.

The best organizations aren’t just people-centric – they’re process-conscious.Because nothing says “we don’t respect your time or talent” quite like a three-week, four-platform approval cycle to order printer paper.

Fix the process. Protect the people.

The Reluctant Entrepreneur

LinkedIn is full of them.

The Entrepreneur. Capital E. The one who posts three times a day about hustle culture, scaling secrets, and how they doubled revenue while meditating in a cold plunge. The one who’s launching a new business every quarter, hosts a podcast about tenacity, and swears they haven’t had a carb since 2016. Their feeds are flooded with startup jargon, client wins, and captions like “Let’s. Freaking. Go.”

And then there’s you.

The reluctant entrepreneur.

Maybe you inherited a family business. Maybe your pandemic side gig got a little too successful, and now it’s your full-time job. Maybe you freelanced your way out of a layoff and suddenly realized you’ve been running a business for two years without meaning to.

You didn’t want to “build an empire.” You just wanted to pay your bills without sitting in traffic or crying in a conference room.

This wasn’t the plan.

You didn’t dream about becoming a solopreneur as a child. You didn’t doodle org charts in your Lisa Frank notebook. And you certainly didn’t wake up one day and think, “You know what sounds fun? Running payroll and negotiating vendor contracts!”

Maybe it was your uncle’s business, and you were the only one left who knew how QuickBooks worked. Maybe your handmade candles exploded on TikTok and suddenly you were shipping to six countries with zero logistics support. Maybe you just said yes one too many times and now you’re here – Googling “how to fire yourself.”

There’s a lot of stuff no one tells you about “Being Your Own Boss” (spoiler: it sometimes sucks).

Sure, there’s freedom. But there’s also the crushing weight of having to do it all. You’re the CEO, the intern, the accountant, the sales rep, the customer service team, and the emotional support animal. You can’t call IT because you are IT.

And what about the stuff you never set out to do? What if you hate marketing, dread networking, and would rather clean a stranger’s gutters than record a LinkedIn video talking about your “journey?” You haven’t checked your CRM in three months, mostly because you’re not sure how to log in. And every time someone asks about your growth strategy, you pretend you didn’t hear them over the sound of your own existential dread.

You can love your work – and still not love the business part of it.

*****

And what’s often the cruelest twist in this trap of success is the fact that you’re good at what you do.

So you get referrals, word spreads, and the work keeps coming in. And with it, a growing pile of administrative sludge. What if you don’t want to scale? What if you just want to do your thing, get paid fairly, and not have to think about quarterly goals or brand positioning?

But now you can’t quit. You’re too deep in. You’ve got clients, contracts, and recurring revenue. You fantasize about being acquired – not by a big investor, but by a mid-level manager who will pay you a decent salary and give you back your Sundays.

You keep going and find ways to make it tolerable. You hire a bookkeeper, outsource the stuff that drains your will to live, and stop pretending you care about KPIs.

You get honest about what you want, what you don’t want, and what success looks like … for you.

You allow yourself to be enough without having to perform founder cosplay.

You’re not lazy. You’re not ungrateful. You’re just trying to build a life that works – without having to pitch it on a carousel slide.

And that? Is entrepreneurial enough.