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I disagree so much about the daily 1on1s. You don’t need to pull people from their desk. Just walk around the room and if nothing has changed you will have the

I disagree so much about the daily 1on1s. You don’t need to pull people from their desk. Just walk around the room and if nothing has changed you will have the following conversation. CTO: Hey, what’s up? Developer: Nothing much, still working on X feature. It’s going okay. CTO: Cool, thanks a lot. It wastes no time at all. Except that quite a lot of the time one of two things can have occurred: 1) The developer is stuck on something but they don’t want to ask because most people would rather struggle for a while first. By asking “What’s up” they will usually volunteer this without it sounding like they need to ask for help and then you can discuss it and usually resolve it or know who they should talk to to resolve it. 2) The developer has gotten distracted by something that seems important to them. If it’s actually important then it’s much better that you know about it rather than not know, and if it’s not then it’s much better that you guide them back to working on what is important before they waste too much time. Seriously, I have gone through periods of doing and not doing this, and the whole organisation moves so much quicker when doing it. Also, if you have to tell everyone something, you will find that telling every single person individually works so much better than telling everyone that thing as a group. When you tell a group of people something nobody in the group will actually hear and understand it. One on one they will ask you a question if they don’t understand but in a group they almost never will. So if there is anything to tell people just walk around and tell each person one by one during this daily process. Zero “Meetings”, daily 1on1s is what it’s all about.

AstroJetson 7y ago
This is known as "Management by Walking Around" My best manager did this. He'd wander by, and ask how it was going. Some days he'd say "tell me one good thing, one bad thing." At least once a day you got face time with him, and once you learned that, you could use it to your advantage. Sometimes I sit in on the daily meeting and don't learn anything, but MBWA, I often get some insight to issues that are going on.

AstroJetson 7y ago

This is known as "Management by Walking Around" My best manager did this. He'd wander by, and ask how it was going. Some days he'd say "tell me one good thing, one bad thing." At least once a day you got face time with him, and once you learned that, you could use it to your advantage. Sometimes I sit in on the daily meeting and don't learn anything, but MBWA, I often get some insight to issues that are going on.