Why do we still accept this as normal?

At some point, manual meeting coordination became something we just accept.

Someone needs to get a group of people in a room. They send a round of availability emails. Replies trickle in. A time gets proposed, someone can't make it, another time gets proposed. Eventually an office manager steps in, puts something in the calendar, and asks anyone with a genuine conflict to flag it. The meeting moves once or twice. It eventually happens.

This is considered a normal and reasonable way to run things. It shouldn't be.

The example that made me think about it

A few weeks ago, a cross-company meeting needed to happen within the group I work in — four businesses under one parent, some on Outlook and Teams, others on Google and Workspace. Senior people, reasonable schedules, a clear reason to meet.

Because the businesses run on different calendar systems, nobody could see anyone else's availability. So the coordination went the manual route. Availability was requested. Replies came back. Eventually, to end the back-and-forth, the office manager was asked to step in — put a time in, see who flagged a conflict.

The meeting moved twice before it took place.

What struck me wasn't that the coordination was difficult. It was that nobody found this surprising. This was just the process. Within a single group, owned by the same parent, the answer to "how do we get everyone in a room?" was: ask around, wait, and have someone eventually force it.

Why this is more common than it looks

The assumption is that coordination gets harder as organisations get further apart — different companies, different industries, different countries. And it does. But the problem doesn't actually require distance. It just requires that the people involved can't see each other's calendars.

Any group running across more than one calendar system — which is almost every group of meaningful size — has this problem. The people know each other. They work together regularly. They still can't schedule a meeting without someone doing the manual work of gathering availability, finding the overlap, and confirming a time.

That's not an organisational failing. It's just what the tools require.

It doesn't have to work this way

Whenn was built for exactly this. Add participants by email — regardless of whether they're on Google, Outlook, or anything in between. They connect their calendar or pick their available times manually. AutoWhenn reads everyone's availability, finds the best slot across the group, confirms the meeting, and sends a calendar invite to every participant.

The meeting that moved twice didn't have to move at all. The office manager didn't need to be involved. The back-and-forth didn't need to happen.

We accept this as normal because we haven't had an alternative. Now there is one.

Free to start at meetwhenn.com.

Whenn handles the entire coordination process — automatically.

Add participants by email, they connect their calendar, AutoWhenn finds the best slot and sends everyone an invite.