Despite their drawbacks, meetings remain an integral part of any modern workplace. The rise of office silos and remote workers make regular check-ins an absolute must for keeping everyone on the same page. Meetings aren’t going away anytime soon, so how can we work to cut down on their time and productivity drains?
6 comments:
I like how we run production meetings here. There’s always a set agenda, and if there is nothing to talk about, PMs are given permission to cancel the meetings. That said, I wonder if this article can take some time to define the word “meeting” a bit more to help clarify the statistics in the opening paragraph. If you’re spending an average of 23 hours a week as an executive as a meeting, what are you defining as a meeting? Here, the managers often throw out the word “I have a meeting with Beth in a few minutes.” Sometimes they are planned, sometimes they are to go fill her in on new developments that may require more immediate reaction than waiting for her to eventually return to her computer (she is one of the few people in this building who doesn’t spend the majority of her day in front of a screen after all). Do we count the management shop walks as meetings? They are an essential duty of the job. To gruff about “oh no 23 hours of meetings!” seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of what some of these executives jobs are. Sometimes, your job is to be the communication hub. I think a better stat would be how many hours of unproductive or inefficient meetings are spent each week, not total hours.
I completely agree with the first three points but I was pretty surprised to see that the article suggested the fourth point of using online tools. In PRM, we talk about a lot of challenges faced by using online tools to have meetings due to the hard to collaborate nature in production meetings digitally as well as making sure everyone gets communicated to properly. I happen to agree with what David Holcomb was teaching and so I was shocked to see this article say it would help kill endless meetings. However, after further looking at the point it seems though that this fourth point was more about having sidebars than using technology to solve the issue and rather having technology as a way to the sidebar. Really instead of technology being a strategy the author of the article looks at being a means for achieving the strategy of the sidebar. However, I don’t know how effective digital sidebars would be. I agree with Jess, in wanting a definition of a meeting because from the article it seems that a production meeting and an executives' meeting is much different and I would love to know more.
Along the same lines that Alexander points out, online tools aren't always a great tool for meetings but I have found they are a great supplement. I have been using Slack this summer as well as attending weekly meetings. I have felt the transparency and ability to join or un-join the channels on Slack have decreased the amount of questions typically brought up in meetings. There was also a great sense of mutual respect where you could leave a meeting if it was clearly not providing information relevant to you without upper management perceiving it as rude. I think the first 3 tactics addressed are typical, but still useful. Having a plan and knowing who to invite or not invite saves money and headaches. I have seen first-hand how expensive it is to invite 3 unnecessary people to an hour long meeting. Overall, I think management staff should not be scheduling more than 8 hours of meetings a week.
I agree with Jess completely in that I wish that this article had taken the time to define a “meeting”, as it truly does matter how we are choosing to make that distinction. This summer, I often found myself wondering why I was copied on 40 some odd emails per day that truly could have been walking 50 yards to someone’s office and asking a question. That being said, I think that the way in which CMU teaches us to run production meetings is really effective, in that it avoids having to sit for 30 minutes listening to errant rambling before someone finds something significant to say. As the article states, asking for agenda items prior to the meeting truly pushes those involved to be prepared with their questions and concerns before the meeting, instead of hoping that the important stuff is in their head. On the flip side, our meetings often branch into at least 5 sidebars, which become quite frustrating, as people are often left out of conversations that they should have been included on, but no one knew they needed to be at the table. Inviting the right people is also really important because it can expedite a conversation and not waste people’s time.
Most of the “tips” in this article seem to have to do with the efficiency of the meeting before it even starts: ensuring that only essential personnel are there (and that those people will for sure attend), planning beforehand to effectively utilise a given time and not stray off of a given outline, etc. I’m not entirely sure that digital is always the way to go, but it does help with the whole programmable idea. With videoconferencing, one is likely to go off on a tangent or start to casually converse with another in the meeting. Additionally, because a teleconference often means different time zones or, at the very least, geographical places, those involved are more likely to be on separate timelines and, therefore, not have any “wiggle room” in schedules during or after meetings in which to converse. Digital meetings also give everyone a clear view of what is going on in terms of digital presentations, but could be a distraction due to the “multitasking” culture which permeates the modern office space.
--Emily Marshburn
Similar to the other commenters, I think that overall this article lays out some good points but I also have an issue with some of the assumptions it makes. Before I talk about that though, I want to say that I completely agree with Marissa; in my experience, online tools don't actually help once you get into the meeting, but can be great for establishing things such as the purpose of the meeting and answering any baseline questions beforehand so that time in the meeting isn't being wasted. My main point is that I think this article is kind of unnecessary. As addressed by the other commenters, the fourth point that John Hall makes about technology does not really apply in most meeting situations, and I think the other "tips" are pretty obvious to anyone that has been in a badly run meeting before. Making sure everyone has some kind of engagement with the topic of discussion and that the meeting isn't a waste of people's time are two things that I hope any person would consider without needing an article to tell them.
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