[kfarr]

Thank you for posting this. I am also in a situation where I am a mid level manager for a globally distributed team. The advice of "just have less meetings" or "force an agenda for all of them" has already been followed -- you really do have to talk a lot of people in certain roles.

I love the idea of a regular "defrag" process. I haven't done this consciously but it's happened that way because I'm in Pacific time zone and we have a EU headquarters, so as a result there is a chunk between 7am-11am Pacific that is almost always booked. Leaves the rest of the day for working time. Not perfect but works for me.