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Now, these exec reviews were Larry and Sergey’s favorite place to experiment with crazy meeting ideas (kind of fun, actually). I had attended one review where o

Now, these exec reviews were Larry and Sergey’s favorite place to experiment with crazy meeting ideas (kind of fun, actually). I had attended one review where one founder spent the entire meeting on an elliptical machine. Their new experiment was a huge countdown clock. If your manager brings fun gadgets into your meetings to keep him/herself entertained, your work might not be important to the company.

cbsks 8y ago
Or your manager trusts you to do what is right, and knows that the meeting is pointless and their input is superfluous.
- JoshTriplett 8y ago
  In which case the manager is not sufficiently empowered to not have the meeting and not waste your time and theirs.
  - aeternus 8y ago
    Sounds like the meeting was actually quite effective in rallying the maps team behind a single solution ;)
ma2rten 8y ago
Or it could be that you work at a startup where the founders are playful, willing to experiment and don't take themselves too seriously. Google did a lot of things differently than other companies. Larry and Sergey were extremely invested in Google. I don't think that at this point there was a single employee at Google whose work was not important for them. Larry personally signed off on every single hire. And as you can see in this story they got involved in details like what the text on a button is.
- danpalmer 8y ago
  Yep. Meetings are hard to get right. Experimentation with meeting formats can be very valuable. We tend to try a new meeting format for retrospectives every few times, because different formats raise different sorts of issues, some go deep, some go wide, variety ensures that the meetings don’t get boring over time and that we cover as much as possible. We do similar with brainstorming for new projects too. Some brainstorming methods are very design focused or tech focused or user focused, etc. Different types have different results.

cbsks 8y ago

Or your manager trusts you to do what is right, and knows that the meeting is pointless and their input is superfluous.

JoshTriplett 8y ago
In which case the manager is not sufficiently empowered to not have the meeting and not waste your time and theirs.
- aeternus 8y ago
  Sounds like the meeting was actually quite effective in rallying the maps team behind a single solution ;)

ma2rten 8y ago

Or it could be that you work at a startup where the founders are playful, willing to experiment and don't take themselves too seriously. Google did a lot of things differently than other companies. Larry and Sergey were extremely invested in Google. I don't think that at this point there was a single employee at Google whose work was not important for them. Larry personally signed off on every single hire. And as you can see in this story they got involved in details like what the text on a button is.

danpalmer 8y ago
Yep. Meetings are hard to get right. Experimentation with meeting formats can be very valuable. We tend to try a new meeting format for retrospectives every few times, because different formats raise different sorts of issues, some go deep, some go wide, variety ensures that the meetings don’t get boring over time and that we cover as much as possible. We do similar with brainstorming for new projects too. Some brainstorming methods are very design focused or tech focused or user focused, etc. Different types have different results.