5 ms·

I agree with each and every single slide in this presentation; I do. I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to

by garciasn 11mo ago

I agree with each and every single slide in this presentation; I do. I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. Especially, "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; got it. --- For decades, I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested that we have solid outcomes. None of which are followed nor what anyone else wants. Even as a leader at organizations where I can enforce this on my team, it makes absolutely no difference. Hell, Google Calendar (we use Workspace at my current org) doesn't even have solid support for good meeting invite commentary. And, even if it did, 99.99999% of folks wouldn't read any of it anyway.

peterangular 11mo ago
Often, corporate culture is more about maintaining status-quo vs. actually achieving or organizing efforts. People often just want to hear themselves talk, stroke their ego, and position/politic. As an IC/leader/owner this can be _so_ annoying. Anecdotally - this happens at the majority of places/teams/situations unless it's a very small, and coherent team.
dasil003 11mo ago
That's such a reductive statement. Yes there are always some unproductive meetings one has to attend. On the other hand, you'd be surprised how many leaders and middle-managers viscerally understand the cost of low-value meetings, and are doing everything they can to empower individuals to manage their own time. They might not call bullshit in a group setting (after all, as the slides call out: critical feedback should be given 1-1), but rest assured plenty of folks understand and will not hold it against you if you vote with your attendance.
- garciasn 11mo ago
  I have worked at many companies over my career. From 10s of thousands, to thousands, to hundreds, to tens of employees. There wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines. Clearly your experience is different and that's absolutely awesome; consider yourself incredibly fortunate.
  - maxerickson 11mo ago
    In a functional organization, it's almost certainly going to be absurd to argue that you can't provide value to any of the meetings that you are invited to.
    - Aeolun 11mo ago
      I can provide value to any meeting that I’m invited to. That doesn’t mean it’s the most valuable thing I can do with my time (especially given how tragically frustrating most of them are).
      - maxerickson 11mo ago
        I mean, I can probably rephrase things to somehow eventually pin you down to admitting that maybe some meetings are worthwhile or otherwise necessary.
        blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
        I’m looking for where GP or even the original presentation said that no meetings were worthwhile or otherwise necessary. Can you help me find it?
        maxerickson 11mo ago
        The context I'm pulling in is by the caps in the comment I initially replied to, would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING. Note the caps. As far as the GP, what I'm getting at is that they are tediously nitpicking my phrasing rather than addressing my point. If there are some meetings that make sense to spend your time on, (in the context of my comment) what the fuck does it matter if there are also some that it doesn't. If they think they have never spent their time well on a meeting, an explication of that would be more interesting than saying that they can find better things to do than attend some meetings.
        11mo ago
- micromacrofoot 11mo ago
  I've had one manager over 10 jobs spanning 40 years that was on board with this
  - jon-wood 11mo ago
    I’ve had multiple managers over many jobs who’ve said they were on board with this. I’ve had CEOs saying from the top down “decline meetings without an agenda”, and yet somehow it never changes.
    - blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
      Did you actually try doing it? Otherwise, how would it change?
- wiseowise 11mo ago
  > empower individuals Eye roll How to detect a "leader".
  - kortilla 11mo ago
    It’s corporate jargon, but it has a meaning - autonomy. If you’re in the “eye roll” camp you’re gonna max out on your potential pretty early.
amanzi 11mo ago
Yeah, in my experience "attending" a meeting is almost never a choice. I think a better slide title would have been "Scheduling a meeting is a choice". I see so many meetings are created (with a default time slot of 30 minutes), for what could have been a 5 or 10 minute phone call or even just a quick email.
xivzgrev 11mo ago
Yea like having 20 people on a project update call may be a poor of their time, but for boss man it's a great use - everyone he needs in the same room! Don't need to chase anyone down and someone can chime in if something inaccurate is said Way too much upside for this kind of "low value" meeting to disappear
drums8787 11mo ago
This is a big piece of what drove me out of corp jobs. With a sufficient hourly rate people are less likely to have you waste time in meetings. Or maybe I’ve just been lucky. Prob doesn’t work everywhere.
parliament32 11mo ago
> I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. My favourite part of climbing the corporate ladder is finally having enough clout to just say "no". > I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested Try "I am unable to attend meeting without an agenda. Let me know when one has been posted." in your decline message. Do you sound like a dick? Yes. Does it work? Also yes, unless you weren't actually required in that meeting, in which case it becomes a self-solving problem.
- eXpl0it3r 11mo ago
  And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.
  - wiseowise 11mo ago
    > And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Unless your head is on the line, why do you care?
    - delusional 11mo ago
      Because caring about your work, the people around you, and the quite frankly stuff in general is healthy and gives life meaning. If you go somewhere 8 hours a day, you'd like that place to matter to you. Anything else is just depressing.
      - munk-a 11mo ago
        You are correct that caring is important - but it also isn't your responsibility at the end of the day. If you don't care you're doing it wrong - if you let it eat you up inside whenever anything goes wrong you're also doing it wrong. Work-life balance is mostly talked about in terms of time commitments but there is also an emotional commitment you need to balance. It's unhealthy to be too far in either extreme and, especially folks that are naturally empathetic, should be more wary of falling into the trap of overinvesting in a workplace and suffering mentally for it.
baxtr 11mo ago
AFAIK amazon is a rare exception.
watwut 11mo ago
> "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; got it. It is completely valid to say "no" to meeting in our company. Not to all of them, but to most. Or to ask "Do I have to be here? Why was I invited, it seems out of my scope" and move from there. I see people doing that and I was doing that.
darth_avocado 11mo ago
> Especially, "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; I am pretty aggressive about declining meetings and protecting my time. And I still agree to what you say. No matter how you structure meetings, there’s always a chance that items unrelated to the agenda are discussed, decisions are made when they’re not supposed to be made, incorrect information is conveyed or misunderstandings are not addressed. Unfortunate reality of corporate world is that you’re more likely to ask yourself be included than you decline meetings. This of course doesn’t even touch the performative parts of corporate bs where “yOu NEeD tO Be MOrE ViSIblE”
- blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
  Let me tell you what visibility looks like: - regular reports sent to all stakeholders with relevant detail - videos that demonstrate important features that folks can watch on their own time - scheduling small, focused meetings with the most important stakeholders so they can actually get what they need It doesn’t look like going to meetings and never talking, or worse, going to meetings and blathering on so someone knows you were there.
  - darth_avocado 11mo ago
    Depends on who is evaluating that. Not disagreeing what you mentioned helps, just that it doesn’t work everywhere.
blauditore 11mo ago
>doesn't even have solid support for good meeting invite commentary Description is sent along with the initial invite, and for subsequent invites, there's a text box for commentary on the sent emails. Or what are you looking for?
- jrochkind1 11mo ago
  (not the GP) I want a good agenda, which means with markup possible, including links.
- SequoiaHope 11mo ago
  We do so much on slack I can safely ignore email at work and just look at meeting notes on Google calendar. I would expect that to include these notes but I’m not sure. Also I agree people won’t read them anyway.
brightball 11mo ago
Google Calendar/Workspace does have a cool option to create a Google Doc for notes, that is automatically shared with everybody on the invite. It’s a great spot to place an agenda, meeting notes, action items, etc.
paganel 11mo ago
> And, even if it did, 99.99999% of folks wouldn't read any of it anyway. Because meetings have become part of the job for many office workers, I'd say the majority of them, they (the meetings) are not sees as a means to an end anymore (as in "we hold this meeting in order to solve a specific problem"), and I'm not even sure that that hasn't always been the case, meetings are seen as a mainstay of holding an office-job, as means in themselves: "We go to (office) work so it's only natural that we'll hold meetings".
cpill 11mo ago
I can smell a startup coming on...
TYPE_FASTER 11mo ago
> And, even if it did, 99.99999% of folks wouldn't read any of it anyway. One approach that I've seen work is start the meeting by having everybody read a document (see https://www.sixpagermemo.com https://www.sixpagermemo.com). It's fresh on everybody's mind, and everybody just read the same content.
SergeAx 11mo ago
Interestingly, both of your points could be addressed by adopting a company-wide policy: if a meeting has no agenda attached, it is optional to join. Or, in short, "no agenda - no attenda."

peterangular 11mo ago

Often, corporate culture is more about maintaining status-quo vs. actually achieving or organizing efforts. People often just want to hear themselves talk, stroke their ego, and position/politic. As an IC/leader/owner this can be _so_ annoying. Anecdotally - this happens at the majority of places/teams/situations unless it's a very small, and coherent team.

dasil003 11mo ago

That's such a reductive statement. Yes there are always some unproductive meetings one has to attend. On the other hand, you'd be surprised how many leaders and middle-managers viscerally understand the cost of low-value meetings, and are doing everything they can to empower individuals to manage their own time. They might not call bullshit in a group setting (after all, as the slides call out: critical feedback should be given 1-1), but rest assured plenty of folks understand and will not hold it against you if you vote with your attendance.

garciasn 11mo ago
I have worked at many companies over my career. From 10s of thousands, to thousands, to hundreds, to tens of employees. There wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines. Clearly your experience is different and that's absolutely awesome; consider yourself incredibly fortunate.
- maxerickson 11mo ago
  In a functional organization, it's almost certainly going to be absurd to argue that you can't provide value to any of the meetings that you are invited to.
  - Aeolun 11mo ago
    I can provide value to any meeting that I’m invited to. That doesn’t mean it’s the most valuable thing I can do with my time (especially given how tragically frustrating most of them are).
    - maxerickson 11mo ago
      I mean, I can probably rephrase things to somehow eventually pin you down to admitting that maybe some meetings are worthwhile or otherwise necessary.
      - blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
        I’m looking for where GP or even the original presentation said that no meetings were worthwhile or otherwise necessary. Can you help me find it?
        maxerickson 11mo ago
        The context I'm pulling in is by the caps in the comment I initially replied to, would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING. Note the caps. As far as the GP, what I'm getting at is that they are tediously nitpicking my phrasing rather than addressing my point. If there are some meetings that make sense to spend your time on, (in the context of my comment) what the fuck does it matter if there are also some that it doesn't. If they think they have never spent their time well on a meeting, an explication of that would be more interesting than saying that they can find better things to do than attend some meetings.
        11mo ago
micromacrofoot 11mo ago
I've had one manager over 10 jobs spanning 40 years that was on board with this
- jon-wood 11mo ago
  I’ve had multiple managers over many jobs who’ve said they were on board with this. I’ve had CEOs saying from the top down “decline meetings without an agenda”, and yet somehow it never changes.
  - blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
    Did you actually try doing it? Otherwise, how would it change?
wiseowise 11mo ago
> empower individuals Eye roll How to detect a "leader".
- kortilla 11mo ago
  It’s corporate jargon, but it has a meaning - autonomy. If you’re in the “eye roll” camp you’re gonna max out on your potential pretty early.

amanzi 11mo ago

Yeah, in my experience "attending" a meeting is almost never a choice. I think a better slide title would have been "Scheduling a meeting is a choice". I see so many meetings are created (with a default time slot of 30 minutes), for what could have been a 5 or 10 minute phone call or even just a quick email.

xivzgrev 11mo ago

Yea like having 20 people on a project update call may be a poor of their time, but for boss man it's a great use - everyone he needs in the same room! Don't need to chase anyone down and someone can chime in if something inaccurate is said Way too much upside for this kind of "low value" meeting to disappear

drums8787 11mo ago

This is a big piece of what drove me out of corp jobs. With a sufficient hourly rate people are less likely to have you waste time in meetings. Or maybe I’ve just been lucky. Prob doesn’t work everywhere.

parliament32 11mo ago

> I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. My favourite part of climbing the corporate ladder is finally having enough clout to just say "no". > I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested Try "I am unable to attend meeting without an agenda. Let me know when one has been posted." in your decline message. Do you sound like a dick? Yes. Does it work? Also yes, unless you weren't actually required in that meeting, in which case it becomes a self-solving problem.

eXpl0it3r 11mo ago
And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.
- wiseowise 11mo ago
  > And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Unless your head is on the line, why do you care?
  - delusional 11mo ago
    Because caring about your work, the people around you, and the quite frankly stuff in general is healthy and gives life meaning. If you go somewhere 8 hours a day, you'd like that place to matter to you. Anything else is just depressing.
    - munk-a 11mo ago
      You are correct that caring is important - but it also isn't your responsibility at the end of the day. If you don't care you're doing it wrong - if you let it eat you up inside whenever anything goes wrong you're also doing it wrong. Work-life balance is mostly talked about in terms of time commitments but there is also an emotional commitment you need to balance. It's unhealthy to be too far in either extreme and, especially folks that are naturally empathetic, should be more wary of falling into the trap of overinvesting in a workplace and suffering mentally for it.

baxtr 11mo ago

AFAIK amazon is a rare exception.

watwut 11mo ago

> "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; got it. It is completely valid to say "no" to meeting in our company. Not to all of them, but to most. Or to ask "Do I have to be here? Why was I invited, it seems out of my scope" and move from there. I see people doing that and I was doing that.

darth_avocado 11mo ago

> Especially, "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; I am pretty aggressive about declining meetings and protecting my time. And I still agree to what you say. No matter how you structure meetings, there’s always a chance that items unrelated to the agenda are discussed, decisions are made when they’re not supposed to be made, incorrect information is conveyed or misunderstandings are not addressed. Unfortunate reality of corporate world is that you’re more likely to ask yourself be included than you decline meetings. This of course doesn’t even touch the performative parts of corporate bs where “yOu NEeD tO Be MOrE ViSIblE”

blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
Let me tell you what visibility looks like: - regular reports sent to all stakeholders with relevant detail - videos that demonstrate important features that folks can watch on their own time - scheduling small, focused meetings with the most important stakeholders so they can actually get what they need It doesn’t look like going to meetings and never talking, or worse, going to meetings and blathering on so someone knows you were there.
- darth_avocado 11mo ago
  Depends on who is evaluating that. Not disagreeing what you mentioned helps, just that it doesn’t work everywhere.

blauditore 11mo ago

>doesn't even have solid support for good meeting invite commentary Description is sent along with the initial invite, and for subsequent invites, there's a text box for commentary on the sent emails. Or what are you looking for?

jrochkind1 11mo ago
(not the GP) I want a good agenda, which means with markup possible, including links.
SequoiaHope 11mo ago
We do so much on slack I can safely ignore email at work and just look at meeting notes on Google calendar. I would expect that to include these notes but I’m not sure. Also I agree people won’t read them anyway.

brightball 11mo ago

Google Calendar/Workspace does have a cool option to create a Google Doc for notes, that is automatically shared with everybody on the invite. It’s a great spot to place an agenda, meeting notes, action items, etc.

paganel 11mo ago

> And, even if it did, 99.99999% of folks wouldn't read any of it anyway. Because meetings have become part of the job for many office workers, I'd say the majority of them, they (the meetings) are not sees as a means to an end anymore (as in "we hold this meeting in order to solve a specific problem"), and I'm not even sure that that hasn't always been the case, meetings are seen as a mainstay of holding an office-job, as means in themselves: "We go to (office) work so it's only natural that we'll hold meetings".

cpill 11mo ago

I can smell a startup coming on...

TYPE_FASTER 11mo ago

> And, even if it did, 99.99999% of folks wouldn't read any of it anyway. One approach that I've seen work is start the meeting by having everybody read a document (see https://www.sixpagermemo.com https://www.sixpagermemo.com). It's fresh on everybody's mind, and everybody just read the same content.

SergeAx 11mo ago

Interestingly, both of your points could be addressed by adopting a company-wide policy: if a meeting has no agenda attached, it is optional to join. Or, in short, "no agenda - no attenda."