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If you are a manager. > But what if, hear me out, what if the only* work that matters in a knowledge economy happens when we are together? If you quote Peter

If you are a manager. > But what if, hear me out, what if the only* work that matters in a knowledge economy happens when we are together? If you quote Peter Drucker, you ought to know that he was anti-bad meetings. It is easy to say that 80% or more of meetings are bad ones. They do not follow an Andy Grove "High Output Management" concept, hardly have an agenda, and have no constraints. By definition, they are bad meetings. Jeff Bezos is a good example in that the culture he pushed was that people read through a 1-page memo before you meet. It helps set the context, gets people to think about the challenge, and contribute in meaningful ways. But with most meetings, people just show up without doing this preparation. What's the point of meeting if nobody prepared? I agree with the premise that meetings are valuable tools for communication, decision making, and collaboration. But I disagree that we cannot call the current culture of meetings what it is -- a waste of time. Majority are poorly ran and unnecessary. Which is why jokes about "how much does this meeting cost us?" are so relatable. Meetings should be a last resort. https://jondouglas.dev/lets-not-meet https://jondouglas.dev/lets-not-meet

safety1st 4y ago
What we do in my fully remote, heavily async business is we first attempt to solve all problems in an async way e.g. email or Slack (most of us have Slack notifications turned off or heavily limited). In the 15% of cases where an issue can't be solved in this way we do a video meeting. Like Bezos' approach this has the effect of informing all the participants about the key issues before we ever meet, so little time is wasted. I also limit my meeting attendees to people who are directly impacted by possible changes - if someone doesn't have skin in the game on a particular issue I don't really care about their opinion, I mean maybe they will have a perspective none of us have thought of, but things are well documented and they can always send an email, they don't need to be in the meeting. There was yet another gripe thread about daily standup meetings that passed through HN a few days ago. They are another waste of time that you can't afford to mess with with when you're async. We just have a Slack channel where everyone posts a bullet summary of what they completed yesterday, what their plan is today, and their availability. These summaries take less than 10 minutes to write and 30 seconds to read. If you want more info on what someone's doing it's very easy to just DM them and ask. I probably get more positive feedback on that process from new employees than anything else we do.
faizshah 4y ago
Yes, there are so many meetings where a doc is not prepared and they have booked an hour for something that could take 20 minutes to discuss. Then the meeting balloons to an hour because the structure is freeform, there is a lack of understanding of what the meeting is supposed to be about, and everyone is scared to ask “why am I here?” I hate meetings because I feel like if you have something important to say, and you know the key stakeholders you need feedback from, and you know what exact feedback you need from them then it should just be a written doc and you should just schedule 10 or 15 mins for any follow up comments on the doc that need to be discussed. I remember reading Obama implemented a similar strategy where he would have people write him a one pager on whatever they need from him and at the bottom there would be three check boxes: yes, no and “lets talk.”
jameshart 4y ago
I would think everyone is against bad meetings, no? Is there anyone out there arguing in favor of more BS meetings? I assume not. People who advocate for the purpose and value of specific meetings do so because they believe they are good meetings. Of course they are not all right! There are some teams for which a daily standup would be a BS meeting - for them it would be bad; and there are other teams who find a daily standup is the perfect sync-up and planning corrective they need to maximize productivity - for them, it is a good meeting. So people who say ‘daily standups can be a helpful kind of meeting for some teams’ are not advocating for the bad meetings the first team would end up having. Nobody anywhere is making the claim ‘all meetings are good’. But on the other hand I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’. And that seems to me to be trivially disprovable. I do understand people having a strong prior that a proposed meeting is probably bad. I understand setting a high bar for agreeing to participate in meetings. But the heuristic of ‘never meet ever’ seems like a poor one.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > I would think everyone is against bad meetings, no? No. If agenda-less meetings are bad and we know that those they exist, then someone, that dastardly fiend, must not be against bad meetings! > I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’ They're pushing for change. It works a lot like haggling. If you ask for what you want, some well-meaning person will call for compromise and "meeting in the middle" and you won't get what you want. So ask for more.
  - danaris 4y ago
    > > I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’ >They're pushing for change. It works a lot like haggling It's also people who have never experienced a good meeting, either because they haven't been in the industry long or because they've been somewhat unlucky. It's also people who may have had some good meetings, but they are so far outweighed by the bad that even when they end up in a good meeting, the bad ones are coloring their experience so much they're unable to engage productively, and so nowadays all meetings feel like bad meetings. It's also people who started out by saying "these meetings are bad meetings," and being dismissed, then saying "some meetings are bad meetings" and being ignored, and now are saying "all meetings are bad meetings" because they're just fed up and using hyperbole to try to get their point across to people whose paychecks depend on them not understanding.
higeorge13 4y ago
I recently joined a meeting where the organizer was setting the timer for us to go through different section of a notion page, including external references. In the end i suggested to do the rest of the process (a few more notion pages) offline next time. So yeah, a big chunk of meetings is a total waste of time.

safety1st 4y ago

What we do in my fully remote, heavily async business is we first attempt to solve all problems in an async way e.g. email or Slack (most of us have Slack notifications turned off or heavily limited). In the 15% of cases where an issue can't be solved in this way we do a video meeting. Like Bezos' approach this has the effect of informing all the participants about the key issues before we ever meet, so little time is wasted. I also limit my meeting attendees to people who are directly impacted by possible changes - if someone doesn't have skin in the game on a particular issue I don't really care about their opinion, I mean maybe they will have a perspective none of us have thought of, but things are well documented and they can always send an email, they don't need to be in the meeting. There was yet another gripe thread about daily standup meetings that passed through HN a few days ago. They are another waste of time that you can't afford to mess with with when you're async. We just have a Slack channel where everyone posts a bullet summary of what they completed yesterday, what their plan is today, and their availability. These summaries take less than 10 minutes to write and 30 seconds to read. If you want more info on what someone's doing it's very easy to just DM them and ask. I probably get more positive feedback on that process from new employees than anything else we do.

faizshah 4y ago

Yes, there are so many meetings where a doc is not prepared and they have booked an hour for something that could take 20 minutes to discuss. Then the meeting balloons to an hour because the structure is freeform, there is a lack of understanding of what the meeting is supposed to be about, and everyone is scared to ask “why am I here?” I hate meetings because I feel like if you have something important to say, and you know the key stakeholders you need feedback from, and you know what exact feedback you need from them then it should just be a written doc and you should just schedule 10 or 15 mins for any follow up comments on the doc that need to be discussed. I remember reading Obama implemented a similar strategy where he would have people write him a one pager on whatever they need from him and at the bottom there would be three check boxes: yes, no and “lets talk.”

jameshart 4y ago

I would think everyone is against bad meetings, no? Is there anyone out there arguing in favor of more BS meetings? I assume not. People who advocate for the purpose and value of specific meetings do so because they believe they are good meetings. Of course they are not all right! There are some teams for which a daily standup would be a BS meeting - for them it would be bad; and there are other teams who find a daily standup is the perfect sync-up and planning corrective they need to maximize productivity - for them, it is a good meeting. So people who say ‘daily standups can be a helpful kind of meeting for some teams’ are not advocating for the bad meetings the first team would end up having. Nobody anywhere is making the claim ‘all meetings are good’. But on the other hand I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’. And that seems to me to be trivially disprovable. I do understand people having a strong prior that a proposed meeting is probably bad. I understand setting a high bar for agreeing to participate in meetings. But the heuristic of ‘never meet ever’ seems like a poor one.

drewcoo 4y ago
> I would think everyone is against bad meetings, no? No. If agenda-less meetings are bad and we know that those they exist, then someone, that dastardly fiend, must not be against bad meetings! > I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’ They're pushing for change. It works a lot like haggling. If you ask for what you want, some well-meaning person will call for compromise and "meeting in the middle" and you won't get what you want. So ask for more.
- danaris 4y ago
  > > I do hear people saying ‘All meetings are bad’ >They're pushing for change. It works a lot like haggling It's also people who have never experienced a good meeting, either because they haven't been in the industry long or because they've been somewhat unlucky. It's also people who may have had some good meetings, but they are so far outweighed by the bad that even when they end up in a good meeting, the bad ones are coloring their experience so much they're unable to engage productively, and so nowadays all meetings feel like bad meetings. It's also people who started out by saying "these meetings are bad meetings," and being dismissed, then saying "some meetings are bad meetings" and being ignored, and now are saying "all meetings are bad meetings" because they're just fed up and using hyperbole to try to get their point across to people whose paychecks depend on them not understanding.

higeorge13 4y ago

I recently joined a meeting where the organizer was setting the timer for us to go through different section of a notion page, including external references. In the end i suggested to do the rest of the process (a few more notion pages) offline next time. So yeah, a big chunk of meetings is a total waste of time.