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> Meetings are there to ensure that everything is going smoothly and on schedule. Are they? At one time in my career you just let people know when something is
by randomdata 4y ago
> Meetings are there to ensure that everything is going smoothly and on schedule.
Are they? At one time in my career you just let people know when something isn't going smoothly/not on schedule. A quick email (or equivalent) was more than sufficient to raise awareness.
For various reasons I eventually fell into this meeting culture. I don't get it. It produces this weird state where everyone saves up what they have to say for the meetings to avoid an awkward lack of participation or "I have nothing" in the meeting, which results in a barrage of mostly useless information, all while the nuggets of gold that the meeting would benefit from regularly get missed because everyone is too overwhelmed by the information overload.
And because everyone saves up what they have to say, the team seems more distant, which diminishes other beneficial outcomes that arise when everyone is regularly chatting with each other. The information lag also dramatically decreases the overall efficiency of the team, not having useful knowledge as it becomes available.
> You might not like it, but the information must be shared for the system to remain efficient.
The thing is, I actually like meetings. After you've recognized something isn't going smoothly, calling a meeting to formulate a plan of attack under the narrow scope of that specific problem at play can often lead to really great outcomes.
But I dare say that if the meeting is there simply to find out that there is a problem, you are doing something wrong.
- yamasanama 4y ago> It produces this weird state where everyone saves up what they have to say for the meetings to avoid an awkward lack of participation or "I have nothing" in the meeting This is an odd meeting culture. Just remove the requirement that everybody has to bring up something. FWIW I've never felt like that in my teams.
- randomdata 4y agoI'm not sure it can be removed, fundamentally. After all, if everyone sent out their emails, so to speak, what would be left for the meeting? I mean, what are the odds of someone discovering something worthwhile to communicate to the team just seconds before the meeting starts? Any earlier and the email would have already been sent and there would be nothing left for the meeting. Maybe it happens once in a blue moon, but regularly across a wide number of people? No way. I've never attended a status meeting that was completely void of participation, so there must be withholding of information done so to pad the meeting. Not everyone may feel such pressure, but it is apparent that some – and I dare say most – do.
- yamasanama 4y ago> I'm not sure it can be removed, fundamentally. I've not had this for the last 10 years, so it can definitely be removed. Obviously everybody is welcome to bring up whatever is interesting nd worth discussing, and that's what we do in my current and previous workplaces. But there should not be a requirement that everybody has to bring up sth, which would lead to the described issues..
- randomdata 4y ago> I've not had this for the last 10 years, so it can definitely be removed. You’ve sat in regularly scheduled silence for the past 10 years and people still show up? > Obviously everybody is welcome to bring up whatever is interesting nd worth discussing But logically they would have already said it when it first became interesting, unless they felt pressure to pad a scheduled meeting with content, withholding information from the group until the meeting takes place. So, again, what’s the point of sitting in silence or purposefully denying the team information to satisfy the social pressure?
- yamasanama 4y agoI don't understand what you are talking about. Obviously we don't sit in silence. Some things are just easier to discuss in a meeting than over 100 Slack messages. Those things we discuss in meetings.
- randomdata 4y agoRight. Like I said in the first comment, after you know there is a problem, calling a meeting to discuss that problem can be quite fruitful. You only need 1 Slack message to say “Hey guys, this isn’t going smoothly. Can we talk?” The original context was about meetings intended to let others know there is a problem. A time to allow you to say things aren’t going smoothly. But why would you wait for a meeting to let others know there is a problem? The only reason is because you feel pressure to ensure the meeting isn’t silence. Otherwise you would have logically made it known long before. What is really gained in withholding information from the team?
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agothis so much. we have these stupid weekly meetings where this one guy just asks us a dozen question. and then we try our best to answer them on the spot with incomplete information. just post that shit in the chatroom and we'll answer with a thought out answer when we can. standups are pointless status updates where no one listens to each other. even doc reviews, which can be useful, often get fucked because the clever folks with things to say can't leave them as comments on the doc so the owner had time to review and think about them. save meetings for things that require actual discussion, not questions or status updates