10 ms·

Meetings: Where Work Goes to Die

219 points by karterk 15y ago

Havoc 15y ago
>Every meeting should have a clearly defined mission statement. People who use the term "mission statement" are usually people of the meeting holding variety. That and memorandum of understanding, vision etc.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mbesto 15y ago
In case anyone is interested I wrote a blog post about conducting 15-minute meetings. Ever since I've introduced them, they've been quite successful for us. http://www.techdisruptive.com/2011/05/10/the-15-minute-meeting/ http://www.techdisruptive.com/2011/05/10/the-15-minute-meeti...
atomicdog 15y ago
Meetings bloody meetings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYnVt-umSA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYnVt-umSA
tintin 15y ago
More tips: * Always stand-up while meeting. * Not everyone can lead a meeting. Ask someone how can to lead the meeting. This can even be someone without interest in the subject.
- lysium 15y ago
  How are you supposed to take notes in a stand-up meeting?
frou_dh 15y ago
I don't mind a few scheduled meetings a week. I don't know about you, but I don't flat-out work the entire time I'm sitting at a desk, so not being there every so often isn't necessarily a productivity hit. Obviously unfocused and overly general meetings are not good, but for reasonable ones, I find taking the headphones off and going to speak/listen to some human beings for a while to be rejuvenating.
- lparry 15y ago
  As a counterpoint, I find myself thoroughly drained after any meeting that goes for an hour or more. Put me in a two hour meeting first thing in the morning and I'm not going to produce anything useful that day; I'll pretty much be zombified for the rest of the day. I figure it comes down to extroverts (recharged by interacting with others) vs introverts (drained by interacting with others).
  - frou_dh 15y ago
    I think everyone should agree that marathon meetings suck. Perhaps 45m max, with people free to leave if it's no longer relevant to them, is what I'd advocate. I thought my word choice might bring up the intro/extro-vert thing, but I think someone needs to be a pretty extreme case to be flustered by a (reasonable length) meeting with people they already know and hopefully like. I don't really buy it.
amirmc 15y ago
Fabulous post. I get tired of folks complaining about 'meetings' when they've never made the effort to hold a good/efficient one. One additional point I would add is that there really should be someone in the role of Chair (e.g if there are more then 3/4 people taking part). The Chair's only job is to make sure things stick to time and the important points get covered. It doesn't have to be the 'boss', even though people expect it to be. I used to chair lots of meetings and while my style used to come across as a bit militant, after a few sessions people could be assured of the following. (1) Timing was followed (i.e start and end on time). (2) If someone was specifically asked to be there, it was because their input was needed. (3) There was always an agenda and we'd stick to it. Although I felt like a bully at first, people did seem to appreciate this style after a while. Folks would arrive (on time), discuss/decide stuff quickly and then get on with their lives. Meetings are just something else you have to learn about if you want to do them well.
- bwarp 15y ago
  That's all fine and dandy but after time, people tend to stop inviting you if you are assertive and only invite people who will blindly support their ideas.
  - amirmc 15y ago
    I think you've missed my point. The assertiveness was valued and only had to be applied to time-keeping and focus. Evidence that it was valued is that people started behaving differently, meetings ran efficiently and some folks would occasionally thank me.
- notatoad 15y ago
  the chair should be the person who called the meeting. they presumably gathered you all together for some purpose, if they don't keep you on that purpose they're wasting your time. if meetings are happening just out of habit rather than being called by somebody for a purpose, they should stop.
bwarp 15y ago
I have found that meetings are where people who "can't" congregate in great numbers to tell those who "can" how to do stuff wrongly.
- lnanek 15y ago
  Hahaha, yeah. I've had managers call meetings before at a past place I worked, with the result already decided beforehand of course, just because they couldn't take ten minutes to read a code review thread or lookup the difference between two protocols online. It wasn't enough to program it right there, you had to program it and hide anything the manager couldn't understand and would get upset about.
nknight 15y ago
Being prepared for a meeting means the meeting should never take place at all. If you know what you're going to say, put it in a damned email. If I have a question, I'll reply. Then you can craft a thoughtful and correct answer as time allows while consulting any necessary reference material, instead of talking out of your ass. You also look cool by violating the laws of physics. People don't have to actually attend a "meeting" to be there, they just have to gasp read their email! Amazing!
- nodata 15y ago
  The goal of an efficient meeting is the rapid discussion of ideas to reach a consensus. E-mail is dreadful for anything that tends to go off-course (needs to be chaired) or requires rapid discussion with evolving arguments.
  - smackfu 15y ago
    I can only imagine the same people who are saying meetings are terrible are also the ones saying "why doesn't anyone respond to my emails quickly???"
    - nknight 15y ago
      Hardly. I'm the one constantly wondering why people didn't read the email I sent them before interrupting me with redundant questions that were thoroughly answered in the email.
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    Exactly. I used to hate meetings too. But, when you are working on a project that requires thoughtful discussion of something specific, email can be horrendous.
  - nknight 15y ago
    I have never been in a meeting where consensus was reached. I've been in plenty of meetings where management edicts were handed down after an hour of wasted time with "rapid discussion" based on faulty assumptions that could have been fixed in ten minutes if someone had had an opportunity to consult relevant material at their desk in peace. Either you're confusing "peers with a whiteboard" with "meetings", or you're living on a completely different planet from me.
jacques_chester 15y ago
What strikes me about this list is how it basically renames stuff that already exists. I'm about to sound like I'm about 60, but please, bear with me. Every meeting should have a clearly defined mission statement ... I hesitate to recommend having an "agenda" and "agenda items" because the word agenda implies a giant, tedious bulleted list of things to cover. Yet an agenda is the best tool for controlling meetings if the chair is any good. It says "this is what we will discuss and decide and only this". A meeting should not be a free-form discussion -- leave that for chance encounters in the office kitchen. It's a transactional form of communication, a tool to make efficiently make collective decisions. Do your homework before the meeting. Which is why agenda are circulated -- and even more because: Make it optional. Yes! And as Tom DeMarco points out in (I believe) The Deadline, meetings which don't stick to the agenda lead inevitably to everyone having to come to every single meeting just in case something gets decided. If the agenda is trustworthy, people will stay away who should stay away; only interested parties -- who will do the homework because it's relevant to them -- will turn up. Summarize to-dos at the end of the meeting. These are called "minutes". Properly written minutes are very useful and they don't have to be in legalese. The University Computer Club at the University of Western Australia, where I studied, have excellent minutes[1], written with a sense of humour. Before I came to my senses, I used to be involved in student politics. And if that unpleasant experience taught me anything, it was the power of meeting mechanics. A well-run meeting is an extremely useful institution. Get in, discuss, decide, get out. Bam. No ambiguity, nothing left hanging. As a chair there is one rule that counts: don't let the meeting get side-tracked. Stick to the agenda, work it. People quickly learn that they need to get their stuff onto the agenda in advance and the whole process begins to work better. Discussions become more focused, decisions can be made quickly and efficiently. Those who are interested might like to join an organisation like Toastmasters or the Penguin Club to hone their skills, or get involved in committee work, or join a union, incorporated club or political branch. The skills of running an effective meeting are very useful. I applied them during my capstone unit at uni; my team delivered 92% of agreed functionality on-time with no significant defects. And part of that was running tight meetings. [1] http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/2011/ http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/2011/
- DanBC 15y ago
theneb 15y ago
One of the points nearly covered in the article is not going off track, as soon as people get comfortable and start discussing things off topic then the meeting is over as it is no longer productive. The ethos of standing meetings is pretty good, nobody can get comfortable and decisions are made quickly. To this end meetings ARE useful in some situations, topic for discussion should be circulated prior and agreement made in the meeting. As you don't want to fall into the trap of long email threads between co-workers which could be solved with a few minutes of discussion.
funkah 15y ago
The anti-meeting attitude has pervaded my workplace to the point that we don't have meetings for things we really should. It's a strange feeling to wish for more meetings. For a while, we had a scrum master contracting with us that ran meetings with an iron fist. She didn't take any bullshitting or digressing from the point. It was awesome. I miss her all the time.
bradt 15y ago
This article and the 37S "meetings are toxic" (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php) argument really speaks to designers/developers who have worked at an agency. In my experience, many agency meetings attempt to get work done. Most of the thinking happens during the meeting resulting in poorly thought out, off the cuff suggestions. Sure preparation is important, but more specifically most of the thinking should happen before the meeting. The meeting itself should only be about sharing and reacting to that sharing. Every time I need to communicate something, I stop and ask myself, what level of interruption does my message warrant? An email? IM? A meeting? It's very rare that it will save time to bypass email and IM for a meeting. Meetings because project managers want to spend less time in email and IM is unacceptable.
rodolphoarruda 15y ago
this is completely off topic here. I don't mind if you down vote, but every time I read "codinghorror.com" I remember Woody Allen's "Whatever Works" main character who wakes up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of his lungs: "the horror!! the horror!!"
ThomPete 15y ago
I have a very simple rule for meetings. I ask:"Am I needed" and if the answer is yes I ask: "For what?" After that it's pretty easy to figure out whether I should go or not. The important part is to realize that YOU are the judge of whether your presence is needed, not your PM or any other. I think I have dodged probably 80% of meetings that way and I know I have not missed out on a single thing ever. I also make the habit of showing up when I need and leave again when I am not needed.
- DanBC 15y ago
  That's rational advice. In a perfect world there would be no problems with it. How do you deal with irrational humans who attach a bunch of unintended meaning to your actions? For example, some people will think you are arrogant, or rude, or uncooperative. I know you're not, you know you're not, but how do you persuade them that you're just being efficient?
  - ThomPete 15y ago
    I don't care about it. Why should I? If I work at a place where thats an issue I shouldn't work there anyway cause that means the place is going to be a place I want to leave sooner rather than later.
topherjaynes 15y ago
I literally had no meetings yesterday and felt that the lack of constraints on the day led me to be even less productivy. Think there is a fine balance of meetings to break up the day and give direction (maybe just talking with co-workers) and utter freedom. The latter feels too much like a study hall.
rumblestrut 15y ago
My meeting rules are simple. 1. I don't go to a meeting that doesn't have an agenda. 2. After I get the agenda, I try and work out what I can over email and phone, if possible. 3. If I can't get out of the meeting following step two, I let the meeting organizer know I'm available for 45 minutes at the maximum. 4. I leave at 45 minutes regardless if the meeting is done or not. These principles have served me well.
franze 15y ago
worse then meetings: Skype-Calls (or even Group-Skype-Calls) there is no agenda, there is no reason (mission statement), nobody prepares for anything (they are googling it during the call), it is not optional (they just call you), everything is summarized in an email afterwards, the email does not differ in any way from the email you would have written without the skype call. some clients prefer to meet me before i start working for them (not going to happen) - the next thing is they want a skype video chat (not going to happen, i work naked) - then audio (hey, i'm online with a mobile data stick, not going to happen) - then they want a skype chat session ... i'm yet looking for arguments against chat sessions. i once uninstalled skype, but the argument "i don't have skype" didn't work....
- TheSOB88 15y ago
  It sounds like you might be coming off as an unpleasant person. I'm not sure, but that may be affecting your relationships with your clients. More than that, it is probably affecting the -type- of clients you get. If you're not willing to work with someone and compromise, you aren't giving off the right unconsciously-parsed social signals, and you'll scare off the best clients.
- kscaldef 15y ago
  IMO, Skype calls follow the same rules as phone calls. You're not required to answer.
cs702 15y ago
On the other hand, the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School are conducting a study about how executives use their time -- see http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/executivetimeuse/ http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/executivetimeuse/ -- and so far they have found CEOs spend around a third of their time in meetings! Here's a good summary: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204642604577215013504567548.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020464260457721...
- GFischer 15y ago
  That's because they're not "makers", as someone pointed in the thread, PG has an essay titled Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule : http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
edw519 15y ago
6. No chairs. People will soon learn to focus on what must be done and skip all the B.S. before they get tired. 7. No cell phones or laptops. People must focus on the task at hand and nothing else. 8. Lock the door at the start time and don't unlock it for anyone. People will soon learn to show up on time. 9. Designate a referee to say "One at a time," "Take that off-line," or "So what?" Amazing how well kindergarten rules still work. 10. Kill anyone who says any of these words or phrases: scope, mission, best practices, teaching moment, outside the box, domain, tangent, or <x> is the new <y>.
- chadgeidel 15y ago
  #6 is probably the best suggestion ever... except for all those "virtual" meetings I have to attend.
- gatlin 15y ago
  I used to chair the meetings at my 100+ person housing co-op. Even if not everyone showed up, you have a lot of people with conflicting views and ideas shouting over each other. Additionally, I would stab that the average age is 20. Alcohol was also allowed for those of age. We have a culture where it was acceptable for me to bang a gavel and tell people who were rambling or cross-talking to "SHUT THE FUCK UP." Simple and effective. Toward the end of my tenure meetings where we interviewed 10 new members, reviewed an officer, added several new house policies, and allowed community announcements took 45 minutes. So, my point is, it's important for everyone on the team to agree to rather firm terms. Nobody will be mad about this and people do start watching how they speak. Hell, I'm rambling too much right now. "SHUT THE ...
- amirmc 15y ago
  Numbers 6 and 9 seem at odds with each other. 6 says there should be no chairs and people will learn to focus but 9 says people are kids and need kindergarten rules. FWIW I think 9 defines the role of the chair, anyway.
  - parfe 15y ago
    >the role of the chair to sit on. At least in the context of rule #6.
MrFoof 15y ago
In the last month, I attended fifty hours of meetings. Fifty. In the last week before I gave my notice, the week had seventeen hours of meetings. It's not just where work goes to die, it's also a great way to drive individuals out of a company who just want to do good work. Meetings were exactly why we were missing deadlines and were forced to deliver assets that were lower quality because we didn't have the time (thanks to meetings) to do anything right. Meeting-itis is like dropping a nuclear bomb on the morale of some of your team members. Moreover, I'm convinced the reason why projects might devolve into meeting-itis is because none of the attendees can agree on A) what is to be done B) or how to do it. In which, since no one's yet done the legwork to get all that sorted out, there should be no meetings until said A and B have been established and taken care of.
the_mat 15y ago
This list reads exactly like advice from business books from the 1970s or earlier. And I mean exactly. No deviation. Nothing new. Clearly there's more to the meeting issue or people wouldn't be shouting the same advice into the wind 40+ years later.
tlogan 15y ago
Meetings are important - but they need to be correctly organized, led and moderated are very beneficial. Not having meetings for things you should have a meeting is very dangerous - and making some stupid rules like no chairs or lock the doors is also dangerous. You see, you need these stupid things because people organizing meetings don't know how to organize, prepare, led and moderate a meeting: spend some time coaching younger employee to learn how to do that (ha coaching ... that is something we really forget to do because it is not writing code) In other words, meetings are not bad: people organizing, preparing, leading, and moderating meetings are bad. The hardest meeting to lead are "brainstorming meetings" and I was lucky that my EVP was master of them: many interesting and break-thru algorithm happend there.
jorleif 15y ago
While I certainly agree with many of the OPs points about how to make meetings work better, I sometimes suspect that the reason a lot of people dislike meetings is not just that they are ineffective, but rather that they feel unpleasant. Deciding something collectively with a group of three or more people really is much easier if the stakeholders are present, than over email or phone. But in a meeting you get all kinds of nasty conflicts between people, the consequent avoiding difficult but relevant issues, misunderstandings, conflicting mental models, boredom etc. Meetings don't feel nice for these reasons, but I would like to hear something that truly works better. Sure, if the proverbial Steve decides everything, then why have meetings (you only need to meet Steve once in a while), but is that really how you want things to be?
potatolicious 15y ago
I'm going to venture and add one more that I find relevant for myself and the people I work with: - If the meeting involves creatives (coders, designers, graphics, etc), shove them all towards one day of the week, or one time of the day. One of my pet peeves about my last job was that PMs and managers felt free to book meetings at any damn time of the day. If I have a half-hour gap between meeting A and meeting B, I won't get anything done. It got so bad in "crunch time" (when everyone wanted updates on everything) that work practically stopped. My day was 4 hours of meetings interspersed with complete and utterly wasted time. Creatives need significant stretches of time to actually get anything done. Book your meetings around these.
- herge 15y ago
  PG describes this very well: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
jrockway 15y ago
The main problem I notice with meetings is that it's hard to get a chance to talk, and so when people do get a chance to talk, they keep talking to avoid pausing long enough for someone else to step in. I also hate the war between people trying to start talking, involving two people talking over each other until one admits defeat and yields the floor. This is ten times worse with video conferencing. One thing that surprised me about Google is that we have meetings and they proceed in exactly the same way every single time. The end result is a bunch of angry engineers, not new ideas.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  That's why many organisations adopt rules of order. Silent air is a poor medium of transmission. In order to efficiently multiplex communication, you need a good protocol. That's what rules of order do: they impose a protocol between the participants that establishes who can speak when, and on what topic. It's fusty and old fashioned, but it works. I've seen absolute screaming matches that nevertheless 1) reached conclusions and 2) were legally valid. The chair had to constantly shut down the screaming, had to evict several troublemakers from the meeting and to follow the rules with tyrannical strictness, but it worked. That's almost the worst case possible for a meeting (the worst is descent into riot). Rules of order, like any technology, work well if properly applied.
vacri 15y ago
Every rule has an exception, and mine is the first rule - the one 'not to be broken under penalty of death'. At my workplace we have contractors that come and go, plus the in-house devs are frequently offsite. It's really difficult to get all the stakeholders together at once, and while long meetings aren't common, it definitely occurs that we have 60+ minute meetings that are full of content. Also, rule 4 doesn't make sense for two reasons. The first is that the idea of a stand-up meeting is that it's mandatory: get everyone together to quickly thrash out what's blocking them. Just because you're not blocked doesn't mean you're not blocking someone else, plus it helps keep everyone on the same page. Secondly, the rule contradicts itself - meetings aren't mandatory, unless you need to be there. So... you don't have to be there, unless you have to be there, in which case you have to be there?

219 points by karterk 15y ago

Havoc 15y ago

>Every meeting should have a clearly defined mission statement. People who use the term "mission statement" are usually people of the meeting holding variety. That and memorandum of understanding, vision etc.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mbesto 15y ago

In case anyone is interested I wrote a blog post about conducting 15-minute meetings. Ever since I've introduced them, they've been quite successful for us. http://www.techdisruptive.com/2011/05/10/the-15-minute-meeting/ http://www.techdisruptive.com/2011/05/10/the-15-minute-meeti...

atomicdog 15y ago

Meetings bloody meetings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYnVt-umSA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYnVt-umSA

tintin 15y ago

More tips: * Always stand-up while meeting. * Not everyone can lead a meeting. Ask someone how can to lead the meeting. This can even be someone without interest in the subject.

lysium 15y ago
How are you supposed to take notes in a stand-up meeting?

frou_dh 15y ago

I don't mind a few scheduled meetings a week. I don't know about you, but I don't flat-out work the entire time I'm sitting at a desk, so not being there every so often isn't necessarily a productivity hit. Obviously unfocused and overly general meetings are not good, but for reasonable ones, I find taking the headphones off and going to speak/listen to some human beings for a while to be rejuvenating.

lparry 15y ago
As a counterpoint, I find myself thoroughly drained after any meeting that goes for an hour or more. Put me in a two hour meeting first thing in the morning and I'm not going to produce anything useful that day; I'll pretty much be zombified for the rest of the day. I figure it comes down to extroverts (recharged by interacting with others) vs introverts (drained by interacting with others).
- frou_dh 15y ago
  I think everyone should agree that marathon meetings suck. Perhaps 45m max, with people free to leave if it's no longer relevant to them, is what I'd advocate. I thought my word choice might bring up the intro/extro-vert thing, but I think someone needs to be a pretty extreme case to be flustered by a (reasonable length) meeting with people they already know and hopefully like. I don't really buy it.

amirmc 15y ago

Fabulous post. I get tired of folks complaining about 'meetings' when they've never made the effort to hold a good/efficient one. One additional point I would add is that there really should be someone in the role of Chair (e.g if there are more then 3/4 people taking part). The Chair's only job is to make sure things stick to time and the important points get covered. It doesn't have to be the 'boss', even though people expect it to be. I used to chair lots of meetings and while my style used to come across as a bit militant, after a few sessions people could be assured of the following. (1) Timing was followed (i.e start and end on time). (2) If someone was specifically asked to be there, it was because their input was needed. (3) There was always an agenda and we'd stick to it. Although I felt like a bully at first, people did seem to appreciate this style after a while. Folks would arrive (on time), discuss/decide stuff quickly and then get on with their lives. Meetings are just something else you have to learn about if you want to do them well.

bwarp 15y ago
That's all fine and dandy but after time, people tend to stop inviting you if you are assertive and only invite people who will blindly support their ideas.
- amirmc 15y ago
  I think you've missed my point. The assertiveness was valued and only had to be applied to time-keeping and focus. Evidence that it was valued is that people started behaving differently, meetings ran efficiently and some folks would occasionally thank me.
notatoad 15y ago
the chair should be the person who called the meeting. they presumably gathered you all together for some purpose, if they don't keep you on that purpose they're wasting your time. if meetings are happening just out of habit rather than being called by somebody for a purpose, they should stop.

bwarp 15y ago

I have found that meetings are where people who "can't" congregate in great numbers to tell those who "can" how to do stuff wrongly.

lnanek 15y ago
Hahaha, yeah. I've had managers call meetings before at a past place I worked, with the result already decided beforehand of course, just because they couldn't take ten minutes to read a code review thread or lookup the difference between two protocols online. It wasn't enough to program it right there, you had to program it and hide anything the manager couldn't understand and would get upset about.

nknight 15y ago

Being prepared for a meeting means the meeting should never take place at all. If you know what you're going to say, put it in a damned email. If I have a question, I'll reply. Then you can craft a thoughtful and correct answer as time allows while consulting any necessary reference material, instead of talking out of your ass. You also look cool by violating the laws of physics. People don't have to actually attend a "meeting" to be there, they just have to gasp read their email! Amazing!

nodata 15y ago
The goal of an efficient meeting is the rapid discussion of ideas to reach a consensus. E-mail is dreadful for anything that tends to go off-course (needs to be chaired) or requires rapid discussion with evolving arguments.
- smackfu 15y ago
  I can only imagine the same people who are saying meetings are terrible are also the ones saying "why doesn't anyone respond to my emails quickly???"
  - nknight 15y ago
    Hardly. I'm the one constantly wondering why people didn't read the email I sent them before interrupting me with redundant questions that were thoroughly answered in the email.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  Exactly. I used to hate meetings too. But, when you are working on a project that requires thoughtful discussion of something specific, email can be horrendous.
- nknight 15y ago
  I have never been in a meeting where consensus was reached. I've been in plenty of meetings where management edicts were handed down after an hour of wasted time with "rapid discussion" based on faulty assumptions that could have been fixed in ten minutes if someone had had an opportunity to consult relevant material at their desk in peace. Either you're confusing "peers with a whiteboard" with "meetings", or you're living on a completely different planet from me.

jacques_chester 15y ago

What strikes me about this list is how it basically renames stuff that already exists. I'm about to sound like I'm about 60, but please, bear with me. Every meeting should have a clearly defined mission statement ... I hesitate to recommend having an "agenda" and "agenda items" because the word agenda implies a giant, tedious bulleted list of things to cover. Yet an agenda is the best tool for controlling meetings if the chair is any good. It says "this is what we will discuss and decide and only this". A meeting should not be a free-form discussion -- leave that for chance encounters in the office kitchen. It's a transactional form of communication, a tool to make efficiently make collective decisions. Do your homework before the meeting. Which is why agenda are circulated -- and even more because: Make it optional. Yes! And as Tom DeMarco points out in (I believe) The Deadline, meetings which don't stick to the agenda lead inevitably to everyone having to come to every single meeting just in case something gets decided. If the agenda is trustworthy, people will stay away who should stay away; only interested parties -- who will do the homework because it's relevant to them -- will turn up. Summarize to-dos at the end of the meeting. These are called "minutes". Properly written minutes are very useful and they don't have to be in legalese. The University Computer Club at the University of Western Australia, where I studied, have excellent minutes[1], written with a sense of humour. Before I came to my senses, I used to be involved in student politics. And if that unpleasant experience taught me anything, it was the power of meeting mechanics. A well-run meeting is an extremely useful institution. Get in, discuss, decide, get out. Bam. No ambiguity, nothing left hanging. As a chair there is one rule that counts: don't let the meeting get side-tracked. Stick to the agenda, work it. People quickly learn that they need to get their stuff onto the agenda in advance and the whole process begins to work better. Discussions become more focused, decisions can be made quickly and efficiently. Those who are interested might like to join an organisation like Toastmasters or the Penguin Club to hone their skills, or get involved in committee work, or join a union, incorporated club or political branch. The skills of running an effective meeting are very useful. I applied them during my capstone unit at uni; my team delivered 92% of agreed functionality on-time with no significant defects. And part of that was running tight meetings. [1] http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/2011/ http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/2011/

DanBC 15y ago

theneb 15y ago

One of the points nearly covered in the article is not going off track, as soon as people get comfortable and start discussing things off topic then the meeting is over as it is no longer productive. The ethos of standing meetings is pretty good, nobody can get comfortable and decisions are made quickly. To this end meetings ARE useful in some situations, topic for discussion should be circulated prior and agreement made in the meeting. As you don't want to fall into the trap of long email threads between co-workers which could be solved with a few minutes of discussion.

funkah 15y ago

The anti-meeting attitude has pervaded my workplace to the point that we don't have meetings for things we really should. It's a strange feeling to wish for more meetings. For a while, we had a scrum master contracting with us that ran meetings with an iron fist. She didn't take any bullshitting or digressing from the point. It was awesome. I miss her all the time.

bradt 15y ago

This article and the 37S "meetings are toxic" (http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch07_Meetings_Are_Toxic.php) argument really speaks to designers/developers who have worked at an agency. In my experience, many agency meetings attempt to get work done. Most of the thinking happens during the meeting resulting in poorly thought out, off the cuff suggestions. Sure preparation is important, but more specifically most of the thinking should happen before the meeting. The meeting itself should only be about sharing and reacting to that sharing. Every time I need to communicate something, I stop and ask myself, what level of interruption does my message warrant? An email? IM? A meeting? It's very rare that it will save time to bypass email and IM for a meeting. Meetings because project managers want to spend less time in email and IM is unacceptable.

rodolphoarruda 15y ago

this is completely off topic here. I don't mind if you down vote, but every time I read "codinghorror.com" I remember Woody Allen's "Whatever Works" main character who wakes up in the middle of the night screaming at the top of his lungs: "the horror!! the horror!!"

ThomPete 15y ago

I have a very simple rule for meetings. I ask:"Am I needed" and if the answer is yes I ask: "For what?" After that it's pretty easy to figure out whether I should go or not. The important part is to realize that YOU are the judge of whether your presence is needed, not your PM or any other. I think I have dodged probably 80% of meetings that way and I know I have not missed out on a single thing ever. I also make the habit of showing up when I need and leave again when I am not needed.

DanBC 15y ago
That's rational advice. In a perfect world there would be no problems with it. How do you deal with irrational humans who attach a bunch of unintended meaning to your actions? For example, some people will think you are arrogant, or rude, or uncooperative. I know you're not, you know you're not, but how do you persuade them that you're just being efficient?
- ThomPete 15y ago
  I don't care about it. Why should I? If I work at a place where thats an issue I shouldn't work there anyway cause that means the place is going to be a place I want to leave sooner rather than later.

topherjaynes 15y ago

I literally had no meetings yesterday and felt that the lack of constraints on the day led me to be even less productivy. Think there is a fine balance of meetings to break up the day and give direction (maybe just talking with co-workers) and utter freedom. The latter feels too much like a study hall.

rumblestrut 15y ago

My meeting rules are simple. 1. I don't go to a meeting that doesn't have an agenda. 2. After I get the agenda, I try and work out what I can over email and phone, if possible. 3. If I can't get out of the meeting following step two, I let the meeting organizer know I'm available for 45 minutes at the maximum. 4. I leave at 45 minutes regardless if the meeting is done or not. These principles have served me well.

franze 15y ago

worse then meetings: Skype-Calls (or even Group-Skype-Calls) there is no agenda, there is no reason (mission statement), nobody prepares for anything (they are googling it during the call), it is not optional (they just call you), everything is summarized in an email afterwards, the email does not differ in any way from the email you would have written without the skype call. some clients prefer to meet me before i start working for them (not going to happen) - the next thing is they want a skype video chat (not going to happen, i work naked) - then audio (hey, i'm online with a mobile data stick, not going to happen) - then they want a skype chat session ... i'm yet looking for arguments against chat sessions. i once uninstalled skype, but the argument "i don't have skype" didn't work....

TheSOB88 15y ago
It sounds like you might be coming off as an unpleasant person. I'm not sure, but that may be affecting your relationships with your clients. More than that, it is probably affecting the -type- of clients you get. If you're not willing to work with someone and compromise, you aren't giving off the right unconsciously-parsed social signals, and you'll scare off the best clients.
kscaldef 15y ago
IMO, Skype calls follow the same rules as phone calls. You're not required to answer.

cs702 15y ago

On the other hand, the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School are conducting a study about how executives use their time -- see http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/executivetimeuse/ http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/executivetimeuse/ -- and so far they have found CEOs spend around a third of their time in meetings! Here's a good summary: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204642604577215013504567548.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020464260457721...

GFischer 15y ago
That's because they're not "makers", as someone pointed in the thread, PG has an essay titled Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule : http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

edw519 15y ago

6. No chairs. People will soon learn to focus on what must be done and skip all the B.S. before they get tired. 7. No cell phones or laptops. People must focus on the task at hand and nothing else. 8. Lock the door at the start time and don't unlock it for anyone. People will soon learn to show up on time. 9. Designate a referee to say "One at a time," "Take that off-line," or "So what?" Amazing how well kindergarten rules still work. 10. Kill anyone who says any of these words or phrases: scope, mission, best practices, teaching moment, outside the box, domain, tangent, or <x> is the new <y>.

chadgeidel 15y ago
#6 is probably the best suggestion ever... except for all those "virtual" meetings I have to attend.
gatlin 15y ago
I used to chair the meetings at my 100+ person housing co-op. Even if not everyone showed up, you have a lot of people with conflicting views and ideas shouting over each other. Additionally, I would stab that the average age is 20. Alcohol was also allowed for those of age. We have a culture where it was acceptable for me to bang a gavel and tell people who were rambling or cross-talking to "SHUT THE FUCK UP." Simple and effective. Toward the end of my tenure meetings where we interviewed 10 new members, reviewed an officer, added several new house policies, and allowed community announcements took 45 minutes. So, my point is, it's important for everyone on the team to agree to rather firm terms. Nobody will be mad about this and people do start watching how they speak. Hell, I'm rambling too much right now. "SHUT THE ...
amirmc 15y ago
Numbers 6 and 9 seem at odds with each other. 6 says there should be no chairs and people will learn to focus but 9 says people are kids and need kindergarten rules. FWIW I think 9 defines the role of the chair, anyway.
- parfe 15y ago
  >the role of the chair to sit on. At least in the context of rule #6.

MrFoof 15y ago

In the last month, I attended fifty hours of meetings. Fifty. In the last week before I gave my notice, the week had seventeen hours of meetings. It's not just where work goes to die, it's also a great way to drive individuals out of a company who just want to do good work. Meetings were exactly why we were missing deadlines and were forced to deliver assets that were lower quality because we didn't have the time (thanks to meetings) to do anything right. Meeting-itis is like dropping a nuclear bomb on the morale of some of your team members. Moreover, I'm convinced the reason why projects might devolve into meeting-itis is because none of the attendees can agree on A) what is to be done B) or how to do it. In which, since no one's yet done the legwork to get all that sorted out, there should be no meetings until said A and B have been established and taken care of.

the_mat 15y ago

This list reads exactly like advice from business books from the 1970s or earlier. And I mean exactly. No deviation. Nothing new. Clearly there's more to the meeting issue or people wouldn't be shouting the same advice into the wind 40+ years later.

tlogan 15y ago

Meetings are important - but they need to be correctly organized, led and moderated are very beneficial. Not having meetings for things you should have a meeting is very dangerous - and making some stupid rules like no chairs or lock the doors is also dangerous. You see, you need these stupid things because people organizing meetings don't know how to organize, prepare, led and moderate a meeting: spend some time coaching younger employee to learn how to do that (ha coaching ... that is something we really forget to do because it is not writing code) In other words, meetings are not bad: people organizing, preparing, leading, and moderating meetings are bad. The hardest meeting to lead are "brainstorming meetings" and I was lucky that my EVP was master of them: many interesting and break-thru algorithm happend there.

jorleif 15y ago

While I certainly agree with many of the OPs points about how to make meetings work better, I sometimes suspect that the reason a lot of people dislike meetings is not just that they are ineffective, but rather that they feel unpleasant. Deciding something collectively with a group of three or more people really is much easier if the stakeholders are present, than over email or phone. But in a meeting you get all kinds of nasty conflicts between people, the consequent avoiding difficult but relevant issues, misunderstandings, conflicting mental models, boredom etc. Meetings don't feel nice for these reasons, but I would like to hear something that truly works better. Sure, if the proverbial Steve decides everything, then why have meetings (you only need to meet Steve once in a while), but is that really how you want things to be?

potatolicious 15y ago

I'm going to venture and add one more that I find relevant for myself and the people I work with: - If the meeting involves creatives (coders, designers, graphics, etc), shove them all towards one day of the week, or one time of the day. One of my pet peeves about my last job was that PMs and managers felt free to book meetings at any damn time of the day. If I have a half-hour gap between meeting A and meeting B, I won't get anything done. It got so bad in "crunch time" (when everyone wanted updates on everything) that work practically stopped. My day was 4 hours of meetings interspersed with complete and utterly wasted time. Creatives need significant stretches of time to actually get anything done. Book your meetings around these.

herge 15y ago
PG describes this very well: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

jrockway 15y ago

The main problem I notice with meetings is that it's hard to get a chance to talk, and so when people do get a chance to talk, they keep talking to avoid pausing long enough for someone else to step in. I also hate the war between people trying to start talking, involving two people talking over each other until one admits defeat and yields the floor. This is ten times worse with video conferencing. One thing that surprised me about Google is that we have meetings and they proceed in exactly the same way every single time. The end result is a bunch of angry engineers, not new ideas.

jacques_chester 15y ago
That's why many organisations adopt rules of order. Silent air is a poor medium of transmission. In order to efficiently multiplex communication, you need a good protocol. That's what rules of order do: they impose a protocol between the participants that establishes who can speak when, and on what topic. It's fusty and old fashioned, but it works. I've seen absolute screaming matches that nevertheless 1) reached conclusions and 2) were legally valid. The chair had to constantly shut down the screaming, had to evict several troublemakers from the meeting and to follow the rules with tyrannical strictness, but it worked. That's almost the worst case possible for a meeting (the worst is descent into riot). Rules of order, like any technology, work well if properly applied.

vacri 15y ago

Every rule has an exception, and mine is the first rule - the one 'not to be broken under penalty of death'. At my workplace we have contractors that come and go, plus the in-house devs are frequently offsite. It's really difficult to get all the stakeholders together at once, and while long meetings aren't common, it definitely occurs that we have 60+ minute meetings that are full of content. Also, rule 4 doesn't make sense for two reasons. The first is that the idea of a stand-up meeting is that it's mandatory: get everyone together to quickly thrash out what's blocking them. Just because you're not blocked doesn't mean you're not blocking someone else, plus it helps keep everyone on the same page. Secondly, the rule contradicts itself - meetings aren't mandatory, unless you need to be there. So... you don't have to be there, unless you have to be there, in which case you have to be there?