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Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

bbc.com

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Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#121

Post by drugsupplychain »

There's an interesting hatred of meetings by software engineers, and I think it's to far on the hatred spectrum. There's definitely a lot to hate about meetings and they are very poorly run in general. But the argument of "when do you do actual work!" is not a good one. If you run an organization of 200 people, it's a lot more effective for 25 people to spend all of their time making the efficiency of the team, and impact of the team on the business as high as possible, than it is to increase the team size to 225. If those 25 people can, through messy meetings, debates, and emotional outbursts, somehow make 200 ppl twice as effective, that's great!

I think a better framing for meetings is not by looking at the battle, but the war. Individually, yeah it can suck. But the goal is to ensure a large amount of individuals march in the same direction, toward the same goal, and are progressing the business forward. Some amount of work is needed for that.

Let's optimize for maximizing that impact, not how "good" the process feels.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#122

Post by Timberwolf »

duxup wrote: post #96
mipmap04 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.

I was at a company that employed thousands of people. They did a company wide training on effective meetings. Set agendas, notes, and etc were all part of their training. It was great. I never saw a single person do those things... not the VPs, not the CEO, nobody. I did it for my meetings as a sort of invisible act of defiance, but nobody ever read them before the meeting and most didn't know meeting invites came wi…

> not the VPs, not the CEO

This is the biggest problem where I've seen companies try to do this. The C-level and senior management team make a big fuss about how the company is having too many pointless meetings, they need to be effective, short and have agendas... and usually you can count in hours the time before the one of the exact same senior managers has sent a 2 hour, 20-person invite titled "project catch up" with a blank body.

(You can probably generalise this to many company initiatives, not just the ones about meeting habits.)

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#123

Post by ska »

mipmap04 wrote: post #13
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…

I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.

At one startup I was lucky/early enough to have the leverage to declare this as a policy (for me). If I didn't have minimally an agenda with a clear owner and at least one listed decision (or, rarely, a sensible request for inform only meeting) I wasn't going to attend. It got a bit of friction at first but increased the effectiveness of meetings by about 80% I think. It was nice while it lasted.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#124

Post by antipaul »

Important context quote: “Instead he says there has been a rise of managerial roles, which are often not very well defined, and where "the hierarchy is not that clear".“

So this article doesn’t apply to tech-focused organizations. For sure, meetings are still relevant there, but should trend to fewer not more

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#125

Post by progman32 »

duxup wrote: post #96
mipmap04 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.

I was at a company that employed thousands of people. They did a company wide training on effective meetings. Set agendas, notes, and etc were all part of their training. It was great. I never saw a single person do those things... not the VPs, not the CEO, nobody. I did it for my meetings as a sort of invisible act of defiance, but nobody ever read them before the meeting and most didn't know meeting invites came wi…

> "People don't do concrete things any more," he says.

I (dev) and my team certainly do.

To that end, I've started putting a standard caveat at the end of all my team meeting reminders on chat: Everyone is optional, but everyone who goes must have read the agenda and linked pre-reading.

First couple of times I did that, some people self-called-out as not having read the notes (after asking questions specifically addressed in the notes). After that it's been mostly good. People have thanked me for my efficient meetings, but all I did was to make people read the agenda :)

"Therapy" meetings certainly have their place, and I've personally grown a lot as a person in those. We have one (retro) every two weeks. But if most meetings in your organization are better thought of as therapy meetings... well, it's no surprise people don't do concrete things any more.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#126

Post by triceratops »

caro_douglos wrote: post #118
Bartweiss wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the cost of quantity, but agreed. (There have been some really interesting displays of this, like Robot 9k avoiding chat spam, or Kingdom of Loathing's 3-question "test" for joining global chat.) Print fiction stories are higher average quality than web-published or fan-fiction, because they costs money to produce. Nobody prints and binds 500 words of unfinished, unedited rambling, but they certainly put it on AO3…

might charging a ‘call to meeting’ fee based on the attendees salary/hourly rate be an alternative?

Not sure how many people would want to pay to do their own jobs.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#127

Post by munchbunny »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…

> But I never thought I’d miss properly run meetings as much as I did when they were removed completely from our communication toolbox. Use the right tool for the right job and enforce good meeting discipline.

I completely agree. A meeting can be extremely valuable when you have clear goals, an agenda, and clear reasons why every participant is needed/needs to be there.

One tendency I see and hate is when someone calls a 1 hour meeting, finishes the (usually underbaked) agenda in half an hour, but now they feel the need to pad the remaining half hour with whatever they can dredge up. Instantly turns the meeting from "a good use of half an hour" to "a bad use of one hour".

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#128

Post by [deleted] »

cabraca wrote: post #32
holstvoogd wrote: post #14

I call BS. Meetings make me lose the will to live & drove me to quitting my job multiple times. If you want to make sure I don''t do anything during the day, put in a meeting in the middle of it. Perhaps it helps people who have pointless jobs that create no value?

I call your BS call :) There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings My current Project on every second wednesday: 10:00-10:30 Daily Standup 11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix 12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak 13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro 15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting…

[deleted]

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#129

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…

[deleted]

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#130

Post by potta_coffee »

asaph wrote: post #20
helpPeople wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's pointless to you, but someone else needs to hear the status because they need to decide what's important to tell the vice president?

Do you mean the Bee-Watcher wants to know what to tell the Bee-Watcher-Watcher?

I no-shit had a manager that made zero decisions or contributions, but wanted detailed notes on what we were doing so that he could take credit for our work in meetings.
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