8 ms·
Why Walking Meetings Work
- buboard 7y agoIt's 2020 , time for management science to learn how to do science. No, it isn't science to take a study of individuals solving problems and extrapolating that "walking meetings work". It's bs.
- GuiA 7y agoManagement science fundamentally cannot be science. There’s nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace (or outside for that matter). The best you can do is apply statistical approaches to arbitrary abstractions, and the main thing we learn when we do that is that return to the mean is the only thing we can really be sure of?
- buboard 7y ago> There’s nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace That needs proof
- bluGill 7y agoWhile nothing might be too strong a statement, several studies have shown things like changing the light level in an office increases productivity - it doesn't matter what your started with or end up with. Given this how can you study the optimal light level in an office?
- buboard 7y agoi think you already solved it, the optimal level is "fluctuating" (btw thanks for the tip! i work at home and will use that)
- ghaff 7y agoWhat I assume is being referred to is the Hawthorne Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect I admit that I was aware of the original interpretation but not the novelty/disruption effect.
- WFHRenaissance 7y agoAlasdair Macintyre has a good chapter on this in After Virtue.
- pmiri 7y agoSaw a comment long ago mentioning that our early nomadic ancestors must have spent much of their time wandering the landscape, probably for miles a day. What neglect do we bring to our brains when we don't do even a fraction of this?
- rurp 7y agoI have learned that going for a walk is best way for me to think through a tricky problem. Something about the act of walking around almost immediately kicks my brain into a different mode that can do wonders for my thought process. It has to be a leisurely route though, meaning minimal dodging of cars or interacting with people.
- mcv 7y agoOur bodies are undeniably made to walk and not made to sit. Maybe we should redesign our work to involve more walking and less sitting. Walking is hard to combine with computer work, unfortunately.
- jedberg 7y agoNetflix's CEO loves to do walking meetings, and a lot of the other execs follow his example. It's especially nice since the HQ is next to a lovely creek trail. The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.
- gopalv 7y ago> The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything. For some reason, walking meetings tend to work like a memory palace for me. Though I walk down a pretty specific set of landmarks and write notes afterwards, which is usually ordered by the walk trail landmarks & a follow-up would usually not need a set of notes either. There was a time when the smokers used to be the ones to do this as a matter of habit - these days it is much healthier to do walk-talks.
- dvtrn 7y agoI thought I’d heard the term “mind palace” before but couldn’t remember from where (oh the irony). Google reminded me! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks-mind-palace-180949567/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlock...
- jvm_ 7y ago"This is the Memory Palace - I'm Nate DiMeo" https://thememorypalace.us/2016/02/the-wheel/ https://thememorypalace.us/2016/02/the-wheel/
- jfengel 7y agoAh, so he's going for a nice walk rather than doing his meetings while walking from one task to another, Aaron Sorkin style. That makes more sense.
- jedberg 7y agoNo, we have meetings during the walk.
- tomashubelbauer 7y agoWalking meetings are not accessible. If you have blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound colleagues, walking meetings are a wonderful way to exclude them from participating equally in the workplace. That's of course unless you don't already "solve" this issue by just not hiring such folks. I really wish people would think about this. And not only in terms of their current workplace demography, but also their prospective future employees.
- pmiller2 7y agoThe solution is obvious: you solve the issue by not having walking meetings with people who can't effectively participate in them. Why is that so hard?
- Trasmatta 7y agoAlso I don't see why a blind or wheelchair bound colleague couldn't participate in a walking meeting (if they wanted to and were comfortable with it).
- gowld 7y agoNo one is wheelchair-bound. Some people are wheelchair-enabled to enable mobility. https://www.newmobility.com/2015/09/dont-say-wheelchair-bound/ https://www.newmobility.com/2015/09/dont-say-wheelchair-boun...
- Traster 7y agoBecause it's not actually obvious who can effectively participate in them. Are you checking your meeting participants for suitable footwear, asthma, underlying allergies, chronic health conditions they'd rather not disclose to colleagues...
- pmiller2 7y agoThen, ask. Again, simple. Problem solved. Why do y'all want to make these things so hard? It's not that difficult to say "are you okay with a walking meeting?"
- jrumbut 7y agoThe effect of walking on improved conversation is so strong for me I have, for a long time, been wondering why it never caught on in the psychology community. I wonder how much more effective talk therapy could be if delivered while walking, at the driving range, over table tennis, etc.
- obelos 7y agoAt least one psychologist practiced it: “A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch.” —Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze
- Traster 7y agoI have a friend whose boss likes to 'go for a walk' or 'catch up whilst we head over to X'. Naturally she's wearing high heels and it's a fucking nightmare for her.
- speedgoose 7y agoIs she forced to wear high heels at work or she simply likes it?
- NikolaNovak 7y agoI'm afraid I feel my level of sympathy would be 100% correlated with how mandatory the heels are for your friend :-/ On aside, I'm also (genuinely, not snarkily) curious to understand the "Naturally" part in front of "wearing high heels". Don't get me wrong - I personally think they're a fabulously attractive if completely impractical article of clothing, but it feels like in many places in the world they are far from the norm/regular/Natural assumption.
- nikofeyn 7y ago> I'm afraid I feel my level of sympathy would be 100% correlated with how mandatory the heels are for your friend :-/ that's a rather sexist position. someone's wardrobe, if in the entirely reasonable range in which high heels are, should not be dictated by someone else's preferences, particular a boss.
- plorntus 7y agoI mean it's not 100% clear cut like that. Has the person told the boss that it is uncomfortable? They could easily just be oblivious to the problem. Secondly, if it's not mandatory there has to be a point where you decide to do what's best for you. For example, it gets really hot outside where I live in the summer but my office puts the AC at ridiculously low temperatures. For me that means I can't wear shorts in the office because it gets too cold. I wouldn't wear shorts every day and act all surprised about it when nothing has changed nor think anything is sexist or even a personal attack on me.
- 7y ago
- Proziam 7y agoI pace when I'm thinking about work stuff. I find that being upright and mobile keeps me more alert and focused than slouching in my chair, in front of a distraction jukebox. Some people I work with like it (though, they joke that I should buy a school with a racetrack to walk around...) I would love for walking meetings to become the norm. Though, I'm aware that there's a lot of folks who are the exact opposite.
- jlokier 7y agoThat's exactly me! I can easily walk in circles a few hundred times when thinking, sometimes hours at a time if there's a particularly big thing to think about, and do it with other people around if I forget not to. I would love a workplace with long distances to walk around and to have walking meetings. In fact, what a great idea. I'll try to ask people for walking meetings in future. (With sensitivity to the fact some people find walking hard, even painful (back problems, knees, energy levels etc.), especially if it's for a long time.)
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI started walking as part of a weight management strategy, when my team noticed I was doing these walks we started doing 1:1s on walks rather than in the office. They were much better. I find it easier to think things through while I walk so I added a recorder app to my phone so that I could verbally take notes while I was walking in order to not forget things that I had thought about or thoughts that came to me on the walk. It has been a very productive change, not to mention it helps with managing me weight so definitely a win.
- swiley 7y agoFor some reason I was under the impression that recording meetings was illegal.
- harimau777 7y agoIt depends on where you live. My understanding is that in most places in the US you have to have both people's consent. However, in New York, for example, due to laws put in place to make it easier to fight organized crime, recording doesn't require the other person's consent.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoFWIW I don't record meetings, I record notes when I am walking by myself. That said California is a two party consent state so if I were to record a 1:1 I would insure that I had the other person's ok to do so (recorded :-))
- kshacker 7y agoRecorder app for notes != recording meeting. I bet all this is with consent and basically saying the equivalent of "siri remind me to"
- gbear605 7y agoIt’s definitely not illegal if both parties consent to it, which is probably the case in a work meeting
- andybak 7y agoAbsolute blessing if you have a tendency towards ADHD also.
- laurex 7y agoThis is one of the few downsides of remote work. It's not very effective to do walks over Zoom.
- wilkystyle 7y agoIf I'm not presenting slides or sharing a screen, I will often take my Zoom meetings on a walk via the iOS app.
- jlokier 7y agoI find voice conversations over the phone pretty good while walking, using wireless headphones so my hands are free. I do this a lot and pretty much forget I'm walking, can do it for hours if a call or series of calls needs it. As a result, it's probably my main exercise, and I much prefer this over a phone conference or chat while stuck in a chair. Video doesn't fare so well when walking, I agree.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI was just thinking that walking meetings really work in today's environment because as you are walking you get the chance to get in contact with more people that were not originally supposed to be in the meeting and give them things, or get things from them.
- dejawu 7y agoI'm surprised no one's mentioned one of the greatest advantages of walking and talking - spatial memory. I used to go to a therapist who would hold walking sessions along a trail or path in a park. The best thing about it, besides forcing me to get out of bed and be in nature, was that I could remember exactly what we talked about and when, based on landmarks along the trail (e.g. "we were discussing X when we walked over this bridge). Similarly, I find that if I have a phone conversation while driving, I can remember it much better because parts of the conversation correlate to locations I passed as I was driving.
- alisheikhmanesh 7y agoGreat read, I like to record meetings on my phone(with permission) which allows me to listen and take in as much as possible before going back and reviewing what I missed on my phone.
- adrianmonk 7y agoSo, based on this and a recent news story (discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438), the rule seems to be: * Need to do some convergent thinking? Caffeine. * Need to do some divergent thinking? Walk. Each of these helps with one type of thinking but not the other.
- etrk 7y agoReal geniuses walk and drink their coffee at the same time.
- gryn 7y agoConvergent thinking + divergent thinking = linear thinking ? Or is it caffeine + walking = laminar thought flow ?
- adrianmonk 7y agoBeing semi-serious for a moment, I'm genuinely unsure which strategy is best. On the one hand, why not unlock all of your brain's potential? On the other hand, would it make sense to consciously choose which type of thinking to enable? Basically open only the door that leads to the path you want to take.
- seanhunter 7y agoMy experience is that certain types of meetings work really great this way whereas others do not. Collaborative 1:1 type meetings or "same side of the table" meetings where you need creative thinking to work through some complex issue really shine as walking meetings. Where there are concrete points you're trying to get across or in general more "information sharing" type meetings tend not to be so great in this format or at least they definitely need a followup email to ensure everyone understands the takeaways and actions expected. I used to do many/most 1:1s as walks but I found that if you have a serious piece of feedback to deliver etc it's often not as good on a walk and if you always do a walk and then send an email saying "let's do it in the office today" it sends a signal which makes people immediately defensive. Separately I'm a very rigorous note-taker (using a paper book) and one of the big benefits of walking meetings (from my pov) is that people are not sitting with a laptop and are actually intellectually present at the meeting. I just make sure to recap the actions/takeaways as the very last thing before we wrap. Then it's easy for people to remember them and take them back to the desk with them. You can also send a followup email to ensure you're in 100% sync.
- jbanko70 7y agoI know that there is even the Facebook group of such people who make walking meeting and they post there their opinion and share their thoughts. Also, I know that they use dictophones to record everything they were talking bout, then download it to the software that converts audio to text, they check it in https://essaytoolbox.com/spell-checker https://essaytoolbox.com/spell-checker and that's very convinient.