A team I once ran made rules their meetings would end 5 minutes early, to create some space. We didn’t have the power to change the whole org, but we could control team meetings to create space before other meetings. Since the whole team was on board with this, there was always someone who would call out that it was time for the meeting to end, to prevent them running long.

At the same time, we had a rule that meetings would start when they say they start. This was after being incredibly frustrated by a guy on another team who would schedule his meetings to start on the hour, but then display a message that said we’d start at 5 after, to give people time to join, assuming other meetings would run long. This felt like he was wasting everyone’s time who showed up on time, and had the net effect of everyone showing up late to his meetings. If people learned they should show up late to his meetings, they can learn to show up on time to our meetings. Then we can stop waiting around hoping that everyone shows up. When someone shows up late to a meeting that’s already well underway, that sends a strong signal that they should be on time for the next one.