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What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

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Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#101

Post by danjl »

holowoodman wrote: post #39

Btw, question to the wisdom of HN: Good meetings need minutes. Is there a minutes taking tool that does automatically list the attendants and their join/leave times, allow me to create items like TODO, DECISION, POLL, DISCUSS_MORE, GET_INFO, BLOCKER that will then be tabulated and cross-referenced automatically across more than one meeting? And added to the TODO-lists of participants referenced? Preferrably somewhat…

Google Workspace tools, like Google Meet, can automatically transcribe the meeting, and then you can use AI (Gemini) to summarize and generate searchable minutes.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#102

Post by stronglikedan »

javier_e06 wrote: post #100

The human brain hates meetings. It sees people. Tall, short, poorly dressed, overly dressed, it sees the sittings arrangements, someone with the arms crossed, someone is laughing, wait, are we here to talk about technical issues? They want answers now? Why now? Someone is not happy, why? Someone has a question, is Dan, probably something obvious.. That is not how the human brain works. To believe a creative mind is i…

Who is Dan?

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#103

Post by stronglikedan »

pjc50 wrote: post #23

Agenda + minutes, in however minimal a form, is crucial. A meeting with no minutes and no agenda and a warm drink is just a tea party. Not that that doesn't have a role in organizations, but it shouldn't dominate your time. Most standups are therefore tea parties. A previous boss of mine even used to bring biscuits, which was nice. It serves the role of reminding everyone that each other exists and are collaborating…

I find that a good way to get out of some meetings is to ask for an agenda up front (since one is hardly ever provided). I can usually reply to the agenda items with 90% of the info they are looking for, and then that spawns a short back and forth to hammer out the other 10% over email. It works more often than not, but not as much as I'd like.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#104

Post by yencabulator »

One of my rules of thumb is that every single one of the meeting participants should have individually prepared for at least as long as the meeting is, or it's a public announcement or training and not a meeting.

If you can't get someone to commit to that, it sounds like you don't need them in the meeting anyway.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#105

Post by yencabulator »

nxpnsv wrote: post #43

Rant: I hate brainstorming meetings. A manager who wants to feel like they are doing something invite a mix of one or two experts, a clueless pm, engineers from an unrelated project, and handful of random ones hers. Next, with zero preparation we’re supposed to come up with groundbreaking new ideas. Then there is some voting and finally waiting for a summary or gameplay that’s postponed until the heat death of the un…

Sounds like a very poorly run brainstorming session.

How to do it right (IMHO): Have several short but rambling hallway conversations about the upcoming topic for 3-4 days before. Take long showers and let your mind wander. Then do the brainstorming session.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#106

Post by yencabulator »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #94
judge123 wrote: post #6

this feels like advice for the person running the meeting, not the one being dragged into it. I'm just picturing myself telling my boss "Sorry, this meeting doesn't have a clear goal, so I'm dropping off." Anyone actually have the guts to do this when you're not the senior person in the room?

Once I have enough political capital within a company I'll just stop showing up to the ones that are a waste of time for me. If someone asks I'll let them know that it's not useful for me.

The best thing one can have in a career is lack of fear of being fired.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#107

Post by javier_e06 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #102
javier_e06 wrote: post #100

The human brain hates meetings. It sees people. Tall, short, poorly dressed, overly dressed, it sees the sittings arrangements, someone with the arms crossed, someone is laughing, wait, are we here to talk about technical issues? They want answers now? Why now? Someone is not happy, why? Someone has a question, is Dan, probably something obvious.. That is not how the human brain works. To believe a creative mind is i…

Who is Dan?

Nobody knows, he gets invited to every meeting and ask stupid questions, I heard he is a consultant, can't confirm, he works on the other building, corporate.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#108

Post by Scubabear68 »

throw-qqqqq wrote: post #72
duxup wrote: post #64

>agenda I once worked at a company that had something like 3 to 5k employees. Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings. Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite. I loved this, it made for FAR more productive meetings. Nobody at the company that I knew of outside myself and one other person had agendas available for our meetings, including leadership. I think se…

I’m in a company of +6k. > Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite Same rule here, but enforced. We are allowed (and encouraged) to cancel or decline invitations without an agenda here. In my experience, it makes a big positive difference, when people have to justify why they need someone’s time and provide a rough frame for the discussion. Much more focused, much more efficient. Fewer meeting wh…

Yep.

Right now I am living the opposite, consulting to a huge company where anyone can convene huge meetings with no agendas, especially if they are a compliance person, or product person.

We have many, many meetings where many people have no idea what the meeting is about, or even worse they will talk about 3 or 4 different topics.

They also practice what I call Rumor Driven Development. It is not fun.

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#109

Post by mcswell »

throw-qqqqq wrote: post #72
duxup wrote: post #64

>agenda I once worked at a company that had something like 3 to 5k employees. Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings. Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite. I loved this, it made for FAR more productive meetings. Nobody at the company that I knew of outside myself and one other person had agendas available for our meetings, including leadership. I think se…

I’m in a company of +6k. > Rule 1 was to have an agenda available in the meeting invite Same rule here, but enforced. We are allowed (and encouraged) to cancel or decline invitations without an agenda here. In my experience, it makes a big positive difference, when people have to justify why they need someone’s time and provide a rough frame for the discussion. Much more focused, much more efficient. Fewer meeting wh…

I get the "must have agenda" rule, and I'm all for enforcement of that rule, but how did they ensure that the agenda was contentful and meaningful? Not "(1) Convene and take roll, (2) Talk about projects, (3) Set do-outs." [or is it due-outs?]

Re: What would an efficient and trustworthy meeting culture look like?

#110

Post by hluska »

duxup wrote: post #90
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ex-director I worked for had a habit of sending out non-descript meeting requests for Friday afternoon. You never knew if it was was something trivial or layoff announcements. I think he enjoyed spreading panic among his people :-)

It's a power play for sure for some managers. It's also a very strong tell of a bad manager / someone who absolutely has character flaws that should disqualify them from being in management.

Or more charitably, the manager had no idea and none of their reports had enough social skills to explain?
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