Google Ventures’ Secret to Productive Meetings: A Timer

Steve Jobs tried to kill the unproductive meeting by kicking out the least important person from the room. For leaders who want to be well-liked, the design team at Google Ventures has another approach to keep meetings on track: keep a timer on the table.
The Internet giant’s VC arm puts all the startups it funds, which includes Blue Bottle Coffee, About.me, and AngelList, through a five-day bootcamp it calls a “design sprint.” To jam a lot of problem-solving into a workweek, Jake Knapp, a design partner at Google Ventures (GOOG), began using an ordinary timer to impose 20- to 30-minute limits on the various exercises. “It makes time visible and tangible,” Knapp says, “so it changes the way people think about time passing.” As a result, he says, long-winded participants are cut off, and the more reserved are encouraged to pipe up before it’s too late.
As interventions go, it’s cheap. Knapp likes the $25 Time Timer, known in schools as the Magic Clock. It’s easy to set and read, and the amount of time remaining is clearly delineated in red. He first saw the device in his then-first-grade son’s classroom. “Oh, my God, this changes everything,” he recalls thinking. “I figured what worked for small children would probably work well for CEOs, too.”

Courtesy GoogleJake Knapp holding the timer during a meeting
That’s true of many Google Ventures’ startup chief executives, who have continued to use the timer long after their design sprints. Brenden Mulligan, of the photo-sharing app Cluster, says part of the Time Timer’s appeal is its analog honesty “in a world where everyone, including us, is constantly trying to digitize everything.” The eight-inch box with a loud beep is harder to ignore than a smartphone alarm, which can be dismissed with the swipe of a finger. Mike Salguero, CEO of CustomMade, an online retailer for locally made products, even uses it for personal workday tracking, confining e-mailing, for instance, to 30-minute chunks.
Knapp says skeptics can be overcome with delicacy and humor: “I always say in the beginning, ‘Hey, this is going to be really awkward. I have this timer, and if you’re talking when I reach for it, it’s going to be weird.’” After some nervous chuckles, the group generally embraces the efficiency. If you like to stay holed up in a conference room, beating your head against the wall until a creative solution comes to the fore, the Time Timer probably isn’t for you. “You have to sacrifice the potential of a great idea popping up for the ability of getting through a lot in a very short amount of time,” says Mulligan, who stresses the importance of follow-up meetings to develop ideas that don’t initially get a full airing.
The timer isn’t appropriate for every meeting. For people already under pressure, a productivity tool can become as an instrument of torture. “I wouldn’t want to conduct a job interview with a Time Timer,” Knapp says. “But any time people are working together and they know each other, it’s helpful.”