21–30 of 34 posts
EDIT: I think the US equivalent might be "under the bleachers"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly defined goals (literally write them down on a whiteboard if you can) and a little time management? It's tough. If you've got an hour-long meeting and 30 minutes in you're talking about the color of a button, reestablish the goal of the meeting — "hey, we're halfway through this meeting and we're still stuck on the button color — maybe we should make a decision now or move on" I've found that a lot of bikeshed…
I've seen A/B testing drastically reduce bikeshedding. I worked with a PM who wanted to cut bikeshedding a while back. When some executive vociferously argued that we should do things B way, the PM just asked him to document why it's important in an email and then told him we'd do it. A week later an email went out with the executive's strongly worded argument why B is important at the top. At the bottom is "we A/B t…
Does anyone know how to avoid this anti-pattern in group discussions? I don't think starting from the more important issues is always the answer. Assuming that: * the time for discussion is finite * discussions and meetings expand to fill the time they have (meetings expand to fill the time they have) It follows to me that in many situations it IS good to start with the easy stuff, like the bike shed, to get it out o…
You need to enumerate the goals of the meeting on a whiteboard. Literally write them out so people can see. I have found this to be the most effective method by far. When people have a meeting agenda in their email, it won't come to mind during the meeting. When they see the topics ahead of them, they know exactly what needs to be addressed. Someone has to play the assertive, no nonsense authority. Meetings are ripe…
This is one of the most critical roles a good manager can play. I've seen a team cut its meeting hours per week in half because the new manager did this well.
I am so glad to have learned the right word to describe this! I've tried to employ the "drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight" metaphor before but was met with confusion and blank faces. Maybe this is an easier to grasp phrase
> I've tried to employ the "drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight" metaphor before but was met with confusion and blank faces. It also deals with another matter as a metaphor. It's about doing what's easier but without effect, over what's effective but difficult. Bikeshedding is about wasting time on non-important decisions. So there's only slight overlap between the two concepts. The "talk about furniture…
The version I've heard is: "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" :)
This term always amuses me, because in british parlance "bike shed" is mostly associated with the phrase "behind the bike sheds," the proverbial place where illicit activities take place in the school playground: smoking, pubescent sexual exploration etc. To turn it into a verb seems very racy indeed until you find out what it actually means. EDIT: I think the US equivalent might be "under the bleachers"?
Does anyone know how to avoid this anti-pattern in group discussions? I don't think starting from the more important issues is always the answer. Assuming that: * the time for discussion is finite * discussions and meetings expand to fill the time they have (meetings expand to fill the time they have) It follows to me that in many situations it IS good to start with the easy stuff, like the bike shed, to get it out o…
With our teams, the most useful thing we found was simply self-awareness that we were bikeshedding. So you need people to be prepared to stand up and say, "hang on, is this really important or are we just bikeshedding here?" When we started doing this, we found that the bikeshed discussion would often be a consequence of too many people who didn't really have a stake in the outcome being involved in the decision. It…
When planning for investments in a corporation, major stakeholders who are clueless about important technologies (e.g. which hardware and software platform to choose) spend their time on discussing where the paper clips in office storage room should be procured, because that is a thing that they can understand, and they can show how they care about even the smallest detail.
-Thoreau