- A weekly email keeps leadership aligned and cuts down on meetings, said a Roblox engineering exec.
- In his last job, Sebastian Barrios used the email to free up one-on-ones for strategic conversations.
- He also shared it with his team to keep everyone focused on priorities.
In an age where meetings multiply and inboxes overflow, a weekly recap email can help save time and keep leadership aligned. A senior engineering exec at Roblox swore by it at his last job.
Sebastian Barrios spoke on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published Sunday about his email strategy. The podcast was taped before he ed Roblox last month, a spokesperson for the gaming company told Business Insider after this story was first published.
Barrios said when he was the head of engineering at online marketplace Mercado Libre, he sent his CEO a weekly email outlining his accomplishments, what was next on his plate, and where he needed help.
"It helps me keep track of what's working, what's not working," Barrios said on the podcast. "I don't actually have an expectation that people are going to send that to me — it's something I do myself," he added.
Barrios said the email is a simple habit that has freed up one-on-one meetings for higher-level strategy instead of routine check-ins.
Barrios also said he sent this weekly email to his broader team to keep everyone aligned on priorities.
"I usually also get on those emails or help, or saying like, 'Well, let's talk about this and that,'" he said. It can help the team solve problems together, he added.
"It's strange that I haven't heard a lot of people doing it," he said.
A fix for bad one-on-ones?
Barrios might be onto something.
Many one-on-one meetings are being done wrong, an organizational psychologist told Business Insider last year.
Too often, one-on-one meetings become status updates dominated by the manager, missing the point entirely, said Steven G. Rogelberg, who's also a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
"That's not the goal of these things. Because that serves the manager's needs," he said.
Rogelberg said one-on-one meetings were designed to meet workers' tactical and personal needs. Digging into personal needs means saying things such as "Tell me more," so a boss could understand what a worker might need help with beyond a to-do list.
But bosses were often skipping past the personal because that would take more work, he said.
June 12, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect that Barrios spoke on the podcast before he ed Roblox.
