The ConveRel quadrants are a way for you to triage your meetings and figure out which ones can immediately or eventually be async. A classic 2x2 matrix, the two axes are as follows.

The “Conve” axis

At a high level, you can break communication down into two parts.

1. Conveyance. As you may expect, this is mostly unidirectional information transfer. For example, a status update.

2. Convergence. This happens when two or more people need low latency, high bandwidth exchange of ideas to come to a shared understanding. For example, using available information to make a collective decision.

The “Rel” axis

This axis quantifies the strength of the relationship across a wide spectrum.

1. A weak relationship. This is often the case between people who haven’t worked with each other for very long or even if they have, they haven’t had the chance to lay down ways of working together.

2. A strong relationship. Such relationships often exist between high-performing teams and individuals inside and across organisations who’ve built a strong camaraderie working together.

Now that you have visualised the matrix, let’s use it to decide which meetings are necessary and which ones you can do without.