3 ms·

>agenda I once worked at a company that had something like 3 to 5k employees. Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings.

by duxup 1y ago

>agenda I once worked at a company that had something like 3 to 5k employees. Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings. Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite. I loved this, it made for FAR more productive meetings. Nobody at the company that I knew of outside myself and one other person had agendas available for our meetings, including leadership. I think setting the culture for good meetings is set by leadership, and most top leaders make themselves exceptions to every rule and that lack of meeting discipline trickles down and so meetings break down overall.

throw-qqqqq 1y ago
I’m in a company of +6k. > Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite Same rule here, but enforced. We are allowed (and encouraged) to cancel or decline invitations without an agenda here. In my experience, it makes a big positive difference, when people have to justify why they need someone’s time and provide a rough frame for the discussion. Much more focused, much more efficient. Fewer meeting where I think “I shouldn’t have joined”.
- sitkack 1y ago
  Is part of the agenda the outcomes desired, some could be a) gather feedback b) broadcast a new thing c) discuss and decide on next course of action ... It would be nice if agendas explained each persons role in the outcome and what the exit conditions are for the meeting.
  - throw-qqqqq 1y ago
    There are other recommendations around meetings, but the agenda is 100% mandatory. Desired outcomes, minutes of meetings etc. are also part of the default invite template.
- Scubabear68 1y ago
  Yep. Right now I am living the opposite, consulting to a huge company where anyone can convene huge meetings with no agendas, especially if they are a compliance person, or product person. We have many, many meetings where many people have no idea what the meeting is about, or even worse they will talk about 3 or 4 different topics. They also practice what I call Rumor Driven Development. It is not fun.
  - pempem 1y ago
    It might not be fun but the term is great! 'Rumor Driven Development' - definitely keeping this in my back pocket. In consulting you tend to encounter this a lot given that its the largest visible symptom of a lot of root problems such as: 1/ no owner 2/ unaligned priorities 3/ a lot of fear or lack of ownership mentality Generally I push for an agenda and an owner of each topic (or all topics) and a recap, preferably in a transparent location like confluence. Given all the synthesis tools in the market, synthesis has gotten easier. I also generally push to have leadership realize how costly each meeting is and encourage people to excuse themselves from meetings if they are not: owners, influencers, stakeholders.
- mcswell 1y ago
  I get the "must have agenda" rule, and I'm all for enforcement of that rule, but how did they ensure that the agenda was contentful and meaningful? Not "(1) Convene and take roll, (2) Talk about projects, (3) Set do-outs." [or is it due-outs?]
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    At a 100k company, my leadership encourages people to decline meetings without clearly stated agendas and purpose. If you have a poor agenda you look like a clown and people wont come.
- camel_gopher 1y ago
  No agenda, no attenda
- theshrike79 1y ago
  My record for an useless meeting was when the Lead Architect called an all-hands R&D meeting (40-50 people) for the whole morning (0800->1200) It was him reading tickets off Jira and editing them and randomly asking people about clarifications. I was a consultant at the time, billing around 100€/hour and there were others along with their own people. That meeting was a) completely useless for 95% of the people there and b) cost about 15k€ easily.
MSM 1y ago
Completely agree re:leadership. I worked in a couple companies with the "agenda rule" but I worked at one company in particular where it was successful. In that company, leadership had a "no nonsense" type approach and it only took a few reply alls from leaders to meeting requests with "Where is the agenda?" for everyone to fall in line. It also helped that every meeting they sent out contained an agenda.
vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
An ex-director I worked for had a habit of sending out non-descript meeting requests for Friday afternoon. You never knew if it was was something trivial or layoff announcements. I think he enjoyed spreading panic among his people :-)
- duxup 1y ago
  It's a power play for sure for some managers. It's also a very strong tell of a bad manager / someone who absolutely has character flaws that should disqualify them from being in management.
  - hluska 1y ago
    Or more charitably, the manager had no idea and none of their reports had enough social skills to explain?
    - fn-mote 1y ago
      That is very charitable to the manager but incredibly insulting to the direct reports. Leadership comes from the top. That’s what they’re paid for. If there’s a culture of speaking up and nobody does, sure blame the underlings. But CREATING that culture is the responsibility of management. Managers needs training, too, and I’m willing to give it if they’re willing to listen. I stick my neck out for really important or really offensive items, but it’s awkward when the culture isn’t there.
- dsr_ 1y ago
  Way back when, the president of the company had a habit of sending out email on a Monday to schedule a company-wide meeting for Tuesday. These were weeks to months apart from each other. Every single time, I wondered if it would be routine, or an acquisition, or a bankruptcy... One day I mentioned my anxiety to him. He immediately apologized, and from then on, the company-wide meetings had agendas. Eventually that stopped -- when we started doing regular company-wide meetings with a standing agenda. Sometimes everyone needs to communicate better. Without bug reports, what are you going to fix?
pavel_lishin 1y ago
> I think setting the culture for good meetings is set by leadership All culture depends on leadership maintaining it. They have the power to not only set culture, mostly, but even more so they have the power to break culture. You can't have a bottom-up culture that'll withstand leadership ignoring or breaking it. If leadership doesn't inspire trust, that'll spread through the rest of the company very quickly.
fellowniusmonk 1y ago
Companies that allow agenda free meetings are just begging for high control people to generate unnecessary meetings. This can be dominating high control or anxious/disorganized high control, either way it's a waste of people time.
alach11 1y ago
> Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings As soon as I read this line I grimaced. This is a clear sign of an organization that doesn't respect peoples' time. The class should be an email (and proper follow-up by the management chain) establishing three rules: - Meetings must have an agenda - After a meeting, there must be a follow-up email describing what was decided and any action items - Recurring meetings should be rare/exceptional - Given good meeting notes and action items sent afterwards, reduce the invite list to decision makers; people who need to be informed can be added to the follow-up email
- duxup 1y ago
  Sadly you're right. It was a good company but by that time it was being run by some folks who were put in charge to sell the company. Once they were in place most of the executive team seemed to be resume building with little initiates here or there. I rode that train until I was fortunate enough to get a moderate buy out.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  The point of mandatory classes isn't about respecting time or being efficient. It's there to make 100% clear that you can't say "I didn't know" when you do something that was explicitly explained in the online class. So now if a new middle-manager has an agendaless meeting, nobody shows up and they throw a massive fit - people can point at the class and say "It's company policy, deal with it"
  - alach11 1y ago
    Sure. But there are plenty of ways to achieve the same outcome without wasting 8 hours of time for every employee. And once you scale this across all the aspects of company policy/culture you want push, mandatory training classes become incredibly inefficient.
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      Do you have a list of these "plenty of ways"? I'd seriously want to know so I can suggest them in my company.
karaterobot 1y ago
It's got to be a good agenda, too. It can't just be "discuss delivery of project X" or "sync on status of feature Y". Those are too generic. The agenda needs to make it clear what the outcome of the meeting is, and who needs to be there. I'm the only person I know of who writes real agendas for meetings at my company (which is only about 120 people). It's clearly not caught on, but I do it anyway almost as a protest at this point.
HexPhantom 1y ago
Classic case of "do as I say, not as I calendar."

by duxup 1y ago

throw-qqqqq 1y ago

I’m in a company of +6k. > Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite Same rule here, but enforced. We are allowed (and encouraged) to cancel or decline invitations without an agenda here. In my experience, it makes a big positive difference, when people have to justify why they need someone’s time and provide a rough frame for the discussion. Much more focused, much more efficient. Fewer meeting where I think “I shouldn’t have joined”.

sitkack 1y ago
Is part of the agenda the outcomes desired, some could be a) gather feedback b) broadcast a new thing c) discuss and decide on next course of action ... It would be nice if agendas explained each persons role in the outcome and what the exit conditions are for the meeting.
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
  There are other recommendations around meetings, but the agenda is 100% mandatory. Desired outcomes, minutes of meetings etc. are also part of the default invite template.
Scubabear68 1y ago
Yep. Right now I am living the opposite, consulting to a huge company where anyone can convene huge meetings with no agendas, especially if they are a compliance person, or product person. We have many, many meetings where many people have no idea what the meeting is about, or even worse they will talk about 3 or 4 different topics. They also practice what I call Rumor Driven Development. It is not fun.
- pempem 1y ago
  It might not be fun but the term is great! 'Rumor Driven Development' - definitely keeping this in my back pocket. In consulting you tend to encounter this a lot given that its the largest visible symptom of a lot of root problems such as: 1/ no owner 2/ unaligned priorities 3/ a lot of fear or lack of ownership mentality Generally I push for an agenda and an owner of each topic (or all topics) and a recap, preferably in a transparent location like confluence. Given all the synthesis tools in the market, synthesis has gotten easier. I also generally push to have leadership realize how costly each meeting is and encourage people to excuse themselves from meetings if they are not: owners, influencers, stakeholders.
mcswell 1y ago
I get the "must have agenda" rule, and I'm all for enforcement of that rule, but how did they ensure that the agenda was contentful and meaningful? Not "(1) Convene and take roll, (2) Talk about projects, (3) Set do-outs." [or is it due-outs?]
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  At a 100k company, my leadership encourages people to decline meetings without clearly stated agendas and purpose. If you have a poor agenda you look like a clown and people wont come.
camel_gopher 1y ago
No agenda, no attenda
theshrike79 1y ago
My record for an useless meeting was when the Lead Architect called an all-hands R&D meeting (40-50 people) for the whole morning (0800->1200) It was him reading tickets off Jira and editing them and randomly asking people about clarifications. I was a consultant at the time, billing around 100€/hour and there were others along with their own people. That meeting was a) completely useless for 95% of the people there and b) cost about 15k€ easily.

MSM 1y ago

Completely agree re:leadership. I worked in a couple companies with the "agenda rule" but I worked at one company in particular where it was successful. In that company, leadership had a "no nonsense" type approach and it only took a few reply alls from leaders to meeting requests with "Where is the agenda?" for everyone to fall in line. It also helped that every meeting they sent out contained an agenda.

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago

An ex-director I worked for had a habit of sending out non-descript meeting requests for Friday afternoon. You never knew if it was was something trivial or layoff announcements. I think he enjoyed spreading panic among his people :-)

duxup 1y ago
It's a power play for sure for some managers. It's also a very strong tell of a bad manager / someone who absolutely has character flaws that should disqualify them from being in management.
- hluska 1y ago
  Or more charitably, the manager had no idea and none of their reports had enough social skills to explain?
  - fn-mote 1y ago
    That is very charitable to the manager but incredibly insulting to the direct reports. Leadership comes from the top. That’s what they’re paid for. If there’s a culture of speaking up and nobody does, sure blame the underlings. But CREATING that culture is the responsibility of management. Managers needs training, too, and I’m willing to give it if they’re willing to listen. I stick my neck out for really important or really offensive items, but it’s awkward when the culture isn’t there.
dsr_ 1y ago
Way back when, the president of the company had a habit of sending out email on a Monday to schedule a company-wide meeting for Tuesday. These were weeks to months apart from each other. Every single time, I wondered if it would be routine, or an acquisition, or a bankruptcy... One day I mentioned my anxiety to him. He immediately apologized, and from then on, the company-wide meetings had agendas. Eventually that stopped -- when we started doing regular company-wide meetings with a standing agenda. Sometimes everyone needs to communicate better. Without bug reports, what are you going to fix?

pavel_lishin 1y ago

> I think setting the culture for good meetings is set by leadership All culture depends on leadership maintaining it. They have the power to not only set culture, mostly, but even more so they have the power to break culture. You can't have a bottom-up culture that'll withstand leadership ignoring or breaking it. If leadership doesn't inspire trust, that'll spread through the rest of the company very quickly.

fellowniusmonk 1y ago

Companies that allow agenda free meetings are just begging for high control people to generate unnecessary meetings. This can be dominating high control or anxious/disorganized high control, either way it's a waste of people time.

alach11 1y ago

> Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings As soon as I read this line I grimaced. This is a clear sign of an organization that doesn't respect peoples' time. The class should be an email (and proper follow-up by the management chain) establishing three rules: - Meetings must have an agenda - After a meeting, there must be a follow-up email describing what was decided and any action items - Recurring meetings should be rare/exceptional - Given good meeting notes and action items sent afterwards, reduce the invite list to decision makers; people who need to be informed can be added to the follow-up email

duxup 1y ago
Sadly you're right. It was a good company but by that time it was being run by some folks who were put in charge to sell the company. Once they were in place most of the executive team seemed to be resume building with little initiates here or there. I rode that train until I was fortunate enough to get a moderate buy out.
theshrike79 1y ago
The point of mandatory classes isn't about respecting time or being efficient. It's there to make 100% clear that you can't say "I didn't know" when you do something that was explicitly explained in the online class. So now if a new middle-manager has an agendaless meeting, nobody shows up and they throw a massive fit - people can point at the class and say "It's company policy, deal with it"
- alach11 1y ago
  Sure. But there are plenty of ways to achieve the same outcome without wasting 8 hours of time for every employee. And once you scale this across all the aspects of company policy/culture you want push, mandatory training classes become incredibly inefficient.
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    Do you have a list of these "plenty of ways"? I'd seriously want to know so I can suggest them in my company.

karaterobot 1y ago

It's got to be a good agenda, too. It can't just be "discuss delivery of project X" or "sync on status of feature Y". Those are too generic. The agenda needs to make it clear what the outcome of the meeting is, and who needs to be there. I'm the only person I know of who writes real agendas for meetings at my company (which is only about 120 people). It's clearly not caught on, but I do it anyway almost as a protest at this point.

HexPhantom 1y ago

Classic case of "do as I say, not as I calendar."