3 ms·

> "Meetings: where minutes are taken and hours are wasted" Only if you run bad meetings. Don't call one without an agenda. Stick to that agenda (have a chair)

by amirmc 13y ago

> "Meetings: where minutes are taken and hours are wasted" Only if you run bad meetings. Don't call one without an agenda. Stick to that agenda (have a chair). Arrive and leave on time. Send minutes (even notes) within the hour after the meeting. Meetings take discipline on the part of the attendees and it's just a structured communication method. It's not fair to blame the tool because most people are too lazy to use it well.

antitrust 13y ago
> It's not fair to blame the tool because most people are too lazy to use it well. Which tool? The tool who called the meeting? Har-har... I'm here all week. But seriously, I think you make a good point. There's an equally good counterpoint, which is that most people can't do this well. Would training help? Or are some people congenitally boring and disorganized (the two are related, I think)?
- JonFish85 13y ago
  I think better training would help. In a lot of ways, I think meetings are an attempt to make up for bad communication. If team size has grown to the point where team members aren't able/willing to communicate with each other outside of having a formal meeting, that's when meetings almost have to be called, to make sure everyone in the room is on the same page. I wish the MBAs would figure out a way to minimize formal "meetings" by encouraging better informal communication. Not all situations need meetings, maybe things are better solved by a simple "walk over to Jill's desk and hash it out there". Just my opinion though, I don't have formal training in management!
potatolicious 13y ago
It's not just bad meetings, it's meetings that shouldn't exist in the first place. Meeting can be useful, but I've worked at companies where meetings are (reasonably) well-run (minutes, chairs, time-capped, etc), but ultimately unnecessary in the first place. People leave with action items but feel as if the whole exercise could have been accomplished in half the time with only half the people in the room. Or a quick email from one person to another. In my trailing days at Amazon we had a project that was falling behind due to unforeseen team attrition. The more it fell behind the more meetings were called - one by each stakeholder - to discuss why the project was behind and what can be done to solve it. Ultimately this just meant more engineers in a room explaining things to a lineup of PMs rather than writing some damned code. A few months of this and I decided it was time for me to attrition out. Before worrying about whether or not your meeting has an agenda, a chair, and set times, figure out if you need the meeting at all.

by amirmc 13y ago

antitrust 13y ago

> It's not fair to blame the tool because most people are too lazy to use it well. Which tool? The tool who called the meeting? Har-har... I'm here all week. But seriously, I think you make a good point. There's an equally good counterpoint, which is that most people can't do this well. Would training help? Or are some people congenitally boring and disorganized (the two are related, I think)?

JonFish85 13y ago
I think better training would help. In a lot of ways, I think meetings are an attempt to make up for bad communication. If team size has grown to the point where team members aren't able/willing to communicate with each other outside of having a formal meeting, that's when meetings almost have to be called, to make sure everyone in the room is on the same page. I wish the MBAs would figure out a way to minimize formal "meetings" by encouraging better informal communication. Not all situations need meetings, maybe things are better solved by a simple "walk over to Jill's desk and hash it out there". Just my opinion though, I don't have formal training in management!

potatolicious 13y ago

It's not just bad meetings, it's meetings that shouldn't exist in the first place. Meeting can be useful, but I've worked at companies where meetings are (reasonably) well-run (minutes, chairs, time-capped, etc), but ultimately unnecessary in the first place. People leave with action items but feel as if the whole exercise could have been accomplished in half the time with only half the people in the room. Or a quick email from one person to another. In my trailing days at Amazon we had a project that was falling behind due to unforeseen team attrition. The more it fell behind the more meetings were called - one by each stakeholder - to discuss why the project was behind and what can be done to solve it. Ultimately this just meant more engineers in a room explaining things to a lineup of PMs rather than writing some damned code. A few months of this and I decided it was time for me to attrition out. Before worrying about whether or not your meeting has an agenda, a chair, and set times, figure out if you need the meeting at all.