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Clever idea. At a job a few years ago, managers and project owners were in the habit of canceling meetings last-minute if no agenda. In principal this was gre

Clever idea. At a job a few years ago, managers and project owners were in the habit of canceling meetings last-minute if no agenda. In principal this was great - give people back time - but it was unfortunately unilateral and too late. Basically, if you don't see the Slack message about "hey, anyone have stuff for this meeting, if not I'll cancel" in the thirty minute window before the meeting, you didn't get a say - so in practice this meant the managers/project owners were the ones making the decisions and upward and sideways communication just didn't happen very frequently. E.g. if manager A has a standing meeting with individuals B, C, and D, and A individually was up to date on what all three of B, C and D were doing, A would cancel the meeting and B/C/D wouldn't be up to speed on what they were doing unless they all set up more individual meetings taking up more time than the original one "gave back." That was less of a problem in-office where others are likely to bump into each other anyway, but when things went remote it was isolating.

wombat-man 4y ago
If it's a recurring meeting, you can attach a google doc or whatever to it in calendar with meeting notes/agenda. People can add to the agenda whenever, and if there's nothing on it the meeting can get cancelled.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I've always found this to be one of those "manager schedule/style" vs "engineer schedule/style" things. Hard blockers get added, but otherwise I've found ICs to be very hesitant about adding to the agenda. Especially when it's just "I want to know what's going on in the other teams/projects" because nobody wants to admit ignorance.
- bertil 4y ago
  That tooling is helpful, but because of asymmetric dynamics, many individual contributors who have things on their minds don’t put things on that agenda. You have to work to make that agenda not “manager domain.” As a manager, I often reach out on the “opposite” day (Monday if the meeting is on a Thursday) and ask if there are things they want to talk about that are not already there. I also put things weeks ahead to give some sense of structure. Same for the team’s meeting agenda: people, especially senior team members, are more keen to edit that one, though. Often, I try to copy elements that they add to our 1:1 to discuss their concern ahead of time. When another team member raises a concern about another member, I ask them to tell them to add it to the agenda. That hasn’t worked, ever, but it highlights the role of that agenda as an asymetric way to handle the relations.

wombat-man 4y ago

If it's a recurring meeting, you can attach a google doc or whatever to it in calendar with meeting notes/agenda. People can add to the agenda whenever, and if there's nothing on it the meeting can get cancelled.

majormajor 4y ago
I've always found this to be one of those "manager schedule/style" vs "engineer schedule/style" things. Hard blockers get added, but otherwise I've found ICs to be very hesitant about adding to the agenda. Especially when it's just "I want to know what's going on in the other teams/projects" because nobody wants to admit ignorance.
bertil 4y ago
That tooling is helpful, but because of asymmetric dynamics, many individual contributors who have things on their minds don’t put things on that agenda. You have to work to make that agenda not “manager domain.” As a manager, I often reach out on the “opposite” day (Monday if the meeting is on a Thursday) and ask if there are things they want to talk about that are not already there. I also put things weeks ahead to give some sense of structure. Same for the team’s meeting agenda: people, especially senior team members, are more keen to edit that one, though. Often, I try to copy elements that they add to our 1:1 to discuss their concern ahead of time. When another team member raises a concern about another member, I ask them to tell them to add it to the agenda. That hasn’t worked, ever, but it highlights the role of that agenda as an asymetric way to handle the relations.