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Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

philipotoole.com

61–70 of 235 posts

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#62
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how is anyone supposed cultivate their personal brand and write books and substack articles about this type of meeting “hack”. Party pooper. ;)

This is exactly the problem. I don't know if any other sector of business runs on as much as fad as ours does.

Marketing/Sales?

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#63
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we don’t get to choose our coworkers and teams necessarily and experiences vary, but I am sorry you dread/dislike a little chit chat with your teammates:(

But there are other times for that, why in a meeting? I chitchat during day 1-1 (virtual/irl) with my teammates, I don't, for etiquette, have to do it again when starting a meeting.

I agree maybe ideally not in a meeting, but humans are imperfect and the larger the number of people invited, the greater the chance it’s going to take a few mins for everyone to arrive. So inevitably the folks who are prompt do some water cooler talk while waiting, and depending on the day/group/topic the water cooler talk might even extend a few mins after everyone has arrived, especially if people are enjoying the convo.

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#66
post #6

We do this at my work and guess what - meetings tend to run 5 minutes late because everyone knows the next meeting doesn’t start until 5 past.

Isn’t the point of TFA that meetings _unavoidably_ run 5 minutes late, and so starting at 0:05 will avoid being impacted by the previous meeting?

I see two flaws:

1) This only works as long as nobody else does it. If the meeting prior to yours follows the same strategy then you’re in the same position as today

2) it starts 5 minutes later but has no plan for ending 5 minutes earlier, which means the next meeting will have to start at 0:10…

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#67

I've found myself watching and waiting for at least 3 people to join a meeting before I connect to avoid the inevitable minutes of greetings and unrelated discussion that always happens. Our meetings always start 5-10 minutes _past_ the scheduled time.

I do love that zoom feature that shows the avatars of who’s joined already. Although I don’t like the game theory of it when every attendee is watching those icons…

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#68
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We meet in person and have a culture where closing your laptop is followed pretty well.

That's so quaint, you all must be in the same place!

Except for the guy who built the thing who lives elsewhere and can’t join the offsites

Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past

#69
post #6

We do this at my work and guess what - meetings tend to run 5 minutes late because everyone knows the next meeting doesn’t start until 5 past.

Sounds like the issue is back to back meetings then.

Also every meeting taking the exact time it was scheduled for is a bit of an org smell too. If you have your meeting etiquette dialed in you should hopefully be finishing meetings early more often than running over. If you are running to the minute or over all the time you might just be having crap meetings.

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