While most meetings (especially âfluffyâ ones) should be optional, what about smaller ones to synchronize the team on whatâs going on? Thereâs the risk that someone who simply doesnât like meetings will happily slog on until it by accident becomes clear that sheâs working in the wrong direction or is hopelessly stuck?
Either as said in the article, there is a list of points that needs synchronisation for advancing in a project or âwhats going onâ is the primary burden of direct management.
-In my view, the manager has to have one to one conversations to catch up with the progress, and if a point of interest arises, schedule a meeting!
-What i have seen (again and again) is that a meeting whose only goal is team âcatch upâ is a one to one meeting with your manager, plus a public : the team.
Dont get me wrong there, when summing up topics this kind of meeting can trigger great insights from the public, but you take a big risk of wasting the time of N-2 attendants for a low chance of improvements.
What those âcatch upâ meetings always succeeds in producing is a great report that should have been done anyway : thats not worth an hour for 10 persons.
And iâm not talking about out of scope disgressions that happens when no clear bullet point topics are defined.
I have been in environments where the corporate culture has stratified employees so strongly (strongly typed, har-har) by their titles that meetings were blessingsâŚwhen they happened. If you work in a place where each âlevelâ refuses to acknowledge anybody lower, even in passing by in the hall, then meetings are the only place a larger picture of your work effort can emerge.
I work in an organization where we have daily status reports, apart from weekly, monthly and quarterly status reports. And all these happens for all the applications we work on. On an average, we spend 2 hours a day in a meeting. When I tried saying no to such status meetings, I was told by upper management that there is a process so you should follow it. How can I ask them to stop acting like a sheep and be a bit of an human being?
To summarize: in general, people judge the competence of others at meetings based on how much they talk, rather than the quality of what they say. The consequence is that people have a strong individual incentive to waste time on trivialties, which degrades the usefulness of the meeting. Additionally, groups tend to strongly favour the first thing which is suggested, without properly considering alternatives, which leads to a tendency towards poor decision making.
I have mixed feelings about meetings. I used to hate them with a passion, prefering to code instead. Over time, I came to understand that if you donât have regular meetings the organization will fall apart. People still need to see one another to get a coherent picture of the organization and where itâs headed. At my girlfriends old workplace they had âmonthly meetingsâ that happened about once every three or so months. The result was that the organization became dysfunctional because the only source of accurate information was the rumors in the hallways.
It probably is a question of discipline just as you say - but I would prefer a disorganized meeting that at least kept people informed instead of the alternative that no meeting was held and no-one has a clue on what to do.
You know, every single developer Iâve ever known has railed against meetings, how theyâre a waste of time, etc. Then, the moment they find themselves in need of information from their team, they fall right back into the same patterns that they railed against.
It amazes me how astonished my developers are when I call a meeting that has an agenda, that sticks to the agenda, and usually ends early. Itâs not that hard⌠really.
A friend of mineâs old boss had a statement:
"Make the meeting worth the money the customer is paying."
Take everyone in that meeting and (assuming the meeting is an hour) add up their hourly rate. That is how much this meeting cost the customer. Does the team get that much benefit from the meeting? If no, then you are doing the meeting wrong.
Some people treat meetings like theyâre a place to catch up on work that they didnât get done because they had other meetings to go to. I think itâs disprespectful to the meeting organizer and makes a potential waste of time an ~actual~ waste of time.
I literally havenât sat in a meeting room since 2005 or physically seen anyone from my company in a business capacity since 2005.
At our company we all telecommute. Ninety percent of stuff can be dealt with by agreement over email or work tickets.
The remaining 10% is handled by highly focused conference calls and Goto Meeting sessions which is at most around 90 minutes worth of business spread over a week.
I do sometimes miss the free tea and biscuits though.
At Lucid Meetings we (well, @EliseID8) have been writing a series of posts about meeting cost vs. meeting value. We care deeply about well run meetings that are valuable for people and organizations. I think youâll find good information for sharing with bosses in there
Nick Hodges has a great point. Iâve seen that abused at a lot of companies. âWow, they somehow managed to squeeze 2 minutes of information into one hour!â