Most organizations waste tremendous time and potential in unproductive meetings, when the real collaboration could happen before anyone enters the room.
When Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, showed me his company's workflow system, I glimpsed the future of collaboration that 85% of companies still haven't awakened to. His 1,900 employees across 93 countries work with virtually no standing meetings. Instead, they collaborate through a custom-built system where ideas, debates, and decisions unfold transparently, often asynchronously, and permanently—what he calls an "organizational blockchain" of decision-making.
"We've used this now for fourteen years. Every major decision, every design, every button, every pricing change, everything we have ever discussed and debated is here and it's permanent," Mullenweg told me. "Whenever a new hire anywhere in the world needs to onboard into any collaboration and understand how we got here, we have a simple link for every debate we had and decision we made. And that will never change as long as the company exists. That's why I call it an organizational blockchain. It's a store of everything that's ever happened."
This isn't just another remote work strategy. It's a fundamental reimagining of when, where, and how collaboration happens. And it contains a powerful lesson for every organization drowning in meeting requests: the most productive collaboration often happens before anyone enters the room.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash