6 ms·

It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week, which also sounds quite miserable. I'd love to see an app that analyzes the int

It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week, which also sounds quite miserable. I'd love to see an app that analyzes the internal meetings that happen inside a company and flags the repeat offenders. I've always found that a small percentage of people hold the most meetings. It also can be a bit awkward to reject their meeting invites constantly. Leaders should remind people about the time-cost of meetings (here's a calculator to help: https://hbr.org/2016/01/estimate-the-cost-of-a-meeting-with-this-calculator https://hbr.org/2016/01/estimate-the-cost-of-a-meeting-with-...). There are meetings that can be beneficial for alignment, but then there are the reoccurring ones where people just want to know what you're working on. Anyways, I'm working on a tool to help cut down on the "what's going on" meetings: https://www.fridayfeedback.com https://www.fridayfeedback.com

wpietri 8y ago
The compression is surely miserable to start, but I hope people stick with it to see what happens next. In Lean Manufacturing, a common process improvement technique is to tighten some constraint. E.g., if you normally have 10 boxes of parts in play, you drop it to 9 and see what happens. Probably something will happen, as they ended up at 10 for a reason. But then you consciously solve issues until 9 is as smooth as 10. The metaphor they use is ships in channels: if you lower the water level a bit, it will expose rocks, which you remove. Then you lower the water level a bit more. My guess is that if these teams are doing weekly retros, they'll feel the pain of compression. People will then brainstorm ways to make the least useful meeting unnecessary. Or to make a longer meeting shorter, and therefore more efficient. First they'll start with the easy things, but eventually they may move on to rearranging workflows, cross-training, and maybe even swapping people among teams. It's really weird to me that in office-work meetings take priority over direct value-generating work. Compare that with a factory floor or a restaurant, for example, where everybody gets that it's bad to randomly stop direct productivity. Hopefully having clear time constraints will help reverse that.
- hinkley 8y ago
  People exhausted by all day meetings aren’t in a good mental space to solve the problem (often the retro is at the end, after all, when everyone wants to just gtfo)
ryandrake 8y ago
Hi, I’m a project manager. I’m the guy who is likely scheduling most of those meetings. Nice to meet you! I think, by and large, we understand the cost of meetings, and don’t casually organize them without going through the alternatives. It’s not rocket science. My thought process is generally: 0. Before anything, come up with a written agenda and goals for the communication. Don’t move past this step until done. 1. Does this communication even need to happen? Maybe there is an internal document already I can point people to. 2. If not, Can this be done async over E-mail? 3. If not, can it be done over chat? 4. If not, can it be done in a series of 1:1s between me and each attendee? 5. If not, then a meeting has to happen. What’s the true minimal list of required attendees? Who is optional? I am loathe to waste the time of a productive individual contributor if I don’t have to. If I can invite his/her manager instead, I will. Sorry, that’s the Faustian bargain you make when becoming a manager! 6. What’s the shortest possible productive duration? 7. Is there a time slot that is miraculously free for everyone, respecting time zones and working hours for people? 8. If not, is there a time slot that works for most people? If, again by some great miracle, there are multiple time slots that work, I favor ones that are adjacent to other meetings in their calendars, so as to not break up a productive no-meeting block.
- pwg 8y ago
  Good job there with your checklist. Unfortunately, for every one of you who does the above checklist before pulling the "schedule meeting" trigger, there are 500 other project managers who's first reaction to everything is: "schedule a meeting".
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Then there is the "I can get what I need in a 2hr meeting at the cost of 16hrs of other peoples time" ones. I hate those ones. If your programmers are taking laptops to meetings to write code while you are holding the meeting, you should consider a career in yak-farming not project management. Also we need to schedule a meeting to find out why we are behind on our deliverables because of last weeks meeting taking most of the day putting everyone behind. That one made me giggle. Or as one of my friends at that place had as a wallpaper "The beatings will continue until morale improves".
city41 8y ago
I much prefer meetings to get compressed together as much as possible. If I'm going to get ripped out of my context for a meeting, I'd rather take that hit only once and carry it into as many meetings as possible.
megaman22 8y ago
For a while, I worked mostly remote, four days at home, one day in the office. I miss those days badly... I've never been more productive. Scheduling all the in-person meetings and status updates and planning work into the Monday in the office was the key. Embrace the suck, and the fact that no work will be done that day - you never get any real work done on a Monday anyway, and once you're into status meetings, it's all over anyway. But doing all of that planning and collaborating and getting the shit together on Monday meant the week was laid out, and Tuesday through Friday were freed up for big blocks of deep work. Bonus, not being physically in the office meant I was out of sight and out of mind, free to actually get some work done.
bsder 8y ago
> It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week, which also sounds quite miserable. True, but it forces meetings to compete with meetings rather than development in the schedule.
- romaniv 8y ago
  This is actually a very acute and non-obvious observation. People might get tired during meetings, but this will mostly affect following meetings, rather than engineering. And it's easier to focus on an activity (and optimize it) if it lasts a day rather than an hour. This might end up improving the overall "meeting culture" in the company, teaching people to schedule breaks, be on time and so on.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week That was my first thought, too. I was talking once to a guy who was hiring for a developer position that he couldn't get filled - he told me that he was sweetening the deal by ensuring the dev candidates that they wouldn't have to attend any meetings; he would attend all the meetings for them so they could focus on coding. I had a sneaking suspicion that they realized what he didn't realize... that they'd be on the hook not only for implementing everything that was discussed in these meetings but also interpreting them through him.
city41 8y ago
Just a heads up, fridayfeedback has some layout issues for me: https://i.imgur.com/DdevMCy.png https://i.imgur.com/DdevMCy.png This is on Chrome 66.0.3359.139, Windows 10, fullscreen on a 1920x1080 screen. I get the same layout issue in Firefox.

wpietri 8y ago

The compression is surely miserable to start, but I hope people stick with it to see what happens next. In Lean Manufacturing, a common process improvement technique is to tighten some constraint. E.g., if you normally have 10 boxes of parts in play, you drop it to 9 and see what happens. Probably something will happen, as they ended up at 10 for a reason. But then you consciously solve issues until 9 is as smooth as 10. The metaphor they use is ships in channels: if you lower the water level a bit, it will expose rocks, which you remove. Then you lower the water level a bit more. My guess is that if these teams are doing weekly retros, they'll feel the pain of compression. People will then brainstorm ways to make the least useful meeting unnecessary. Or to make a longer meeting shorter, and therefore more efficient. First they'll start with the easy things, but eventually they may move on to rearranging workflows, cross-training, and maybe even swapping people among teams. It's really weird to me that in office-work meetings take priority over direct value-generating work. Compare that with a factory floor or a restaurant, for example, where everybody gets that it's bad to randomly stop direct productivity. Hopefully having clear time constraints will help reverse that.

hinkley 8y ago
People exhausted by all day meetings aren’t in a good mental space to solve the problem (often the retro is at the end, after all, when everyone wants to just gtfo)

ryandrake 8y ago

Hi, I’m a project manager. I’m the guy who is likely scheduling most of those meetings. Nice to meet you! I think, by and large, we understand the cost of meetings, and don’t casually organize them without going through the alternatives. It’s not rocket science. My thought process is generally: 0. Before anything, come up with a written agenda and goals for the communication. Don’t move past this step until done. 1. Does this communication even need to happen? Maybe there is an internal document already I can point people to. 2. If not, Can this be done async over E-mail? 3. If not, can it be done over chat? 4. If not, can it be done in a series of 1:1s between me and each attendee? 5. If not, then a meeting has to happen. What’s the true minimal list of required attendees? Who is optional? I am loathe to waste the time of a productive individual contributor if I don’t have to. If I can invite his/her manager instead, I will. Sorry, that’s the Faustian bargain you make when becoming a manager! 6. What’s the shortest possible productive duration? 7. Is there a time slot that is miraculously free for everyone, respecting time zones and working hours for people? 8. If not, is there a time slot that works for most people? If, again by some great miracle, there are multiple time slots that work, I favor ones that are adjacent to other meetings in their calendars, so as to not break up a productive no-meeting block.

pwg 8y ago
Good job there with your checklist. Unfortunately, for every one of you who does the above checklist before pulling the "schedule meeting" trigger, there are 500 other project managers who's first reaction to everything is: "schedule a meeting".
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Then there is the "I can get what I need in a 2hr meeting at the cost of 16hrs of other peoples time" ones. I hate those ones. If your programmers are taking laptops to meetings to write code while you are holding the meeting, you should consider a career in yak-farming not project management. Also we need to schedule a meeting to find out why we are behind on our deliverables because of last weeks meeting taking most of the day putting everyone behind. That one made me giggle. Or as one of my friends at that place had as a wallpaper "The beatings will continue until morale improves".

city41 8y ago

I much prefer meetings to get compressed together as much as possible. If I'm going to get ripped out of my context for a meeting, I'd rather take that hit only once and carry it into as many meetings as possible.

megaman22 8y ago

For a while, I worked mostly remote, four days at home, one day in the office. I miss those days badly... I've never been more productive. Scheduling all the in-person meetings and status updates and planning work into the Monday in the office was the key. Embrace the suck, and the fact that no work will be done that day - you never get any real work done on a Monday anyway, and once you're into status meetings, it's all over anyway. But doing all of that planning and collaborating and getting the shit together on Monday meant the week was laid out, and Tuesday through Friday were freed up for big blocks of deep work. Bonus, not being physically in the office meant I was out of sight and out of mind, free to actually get some work done.

bsder 8y ago

> It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week, which also sounds quite miserable. True, but it forces meetings to compete with meetings rather than development in the schedule.

romaniv 8y ago
This is actually a very acute and non-obvious observation. People might get tired during meetings, but this will mostly affect following meetings, rather than engineering. And it's easier to focus on an activity (and optimize it) if it lasts a day rather than an hour. This might end up improving the overall "meeting culture" in the company, teaching people to schedule breaks, be on time and so on.

commandlinefan 8y ago

> It sounds like the meetings are compressed into the other two days of the week That was my first thought, too. I was talking once to a guy who was hiring for a developer position that he couldn't get filled - he told me that he was sweetening the deal by ensuring the dev candidates that they wouldn't have to attend any meetings; he would attend all the meetings for them so they could focus on coding. I had a sneaking suspicion that they realized what he didn't realize... that they'd be on the hook not only for implementing everything that was discussed in these meetings but also interpreting them through him.

city41 8y ago

Just a heads up, fridayfeedback has some layout issues for me: https://i.imgur.com/DdevMCy.png https://i.imgur.com/DdevMCy.png This is on Chrome 66.0.3359.139, Windows 10, fullscreen on a 1920x1080 screen. I get the same layout issue in Firefox.