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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'

#111

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

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 just imagine a meeting bot, who takes care of bringing my points to those slack meetings, and sums up the results.

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

#113

Post by potta_coffee »

crazypyro wrote: post #22
lukethomas wrote: post #3

There's some truth to this, but holy smokes, another meeting is not the cure. There is value in "venting" at work. A few years ago I built a software tool that pings people at the end of the week asking how their week went. Some of the quietest people in the company had the most to say when they were behind a screen. In fact, some people literally called it therapeutic. It turns out that writing things down can serve…

Perhaps you are being overly dismissive of the "extroverts" needs in the situations you are describing... Some might just "complain", but others feel safer being vocal in a group of people. You mention understanding that some of the quietest people have the most to say behind a screen, well, I imagine there is a non-insignificant group of people who feel much safer talking it out within a group where there isn't a wr…

Most work places are heavily dominated by the extroverts. The sales and executive teams are all extroverts. So is the marketing team. IMO it's fair to consider the other side of the coin, there's virtually no way that extroverts aren't going to continue to rule the workplace.

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

#114

Post by twoquestions »

mistermann wrote: post #62
Nokinside wrote: post #36

Since this is Swedish study, I just want to point out that Swedish organizational culture is very meeting and consensus oriented. Nordic cultures may seem very similar, but their organizational cultures are different even within the same company. Others are often frustrated about Swedes and their endless meetings. Finns in the meeting are 'OK. lets do this.' and Swedes reply 'But Jan-Erik has not shared his point of…

I would love to hear similar anecdotes about how Japanese meetings tend to be.

Ask and you shall receive, my favorite horror story: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...

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

#115

Post by larrik »

Bartweiss wrote: post #21
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.

Not only do those things make meetings more productive, they increase the overhead to calling a meeting. We don't often celebrate making things harder to do, but adding friction to something that's happening too often can help bring it back into balance. That's especially true for things with large "multipliers". An unscripted meeting might take one hour for the person calling it, but eat 10 hours of other people's t…

I see it as putting more of the cost of the meeting onto the caller, rather than spreading it amongst the participants via wasted time and energy (or the dreaded re-convene since no one was ready).

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

#116

Post by peterwwillis »

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…

You can compress this for one team by starting at 9am and run the meetings back to back until they're over, no time blocks. Standup -> retro -> planning -> grooming, or architecture -> design -> implementation, etc.

I've seen stand-up, retro, and planning completed in 30 minutes. We used the extra hour and 45 minutes for productivity. On cadence days we get half the day back.

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

#118

Post by caro_douglos »

Bartweiss wrote: post #89
papito wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding a barrier of entry to something generally improves the quality of whatever it is.

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?

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

#119

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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?

I would be very concerned about that killing productivity by making it so that nobody is willing to schedule them at all.

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

#120

Post by mcv »

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.

I prefer meetings with just one clearly defined purpose that all participants agree is worth having a meeting for. Like "what are you currently working on?" (the daily stand-up), "what are we going to do this next sprint?" (the planning), "what is the best way to fix this problem we have?", "where do we want to be in 3 (or 6) months?".

As soon as there's more than one point on te agenda, the meeting is going to be a drag for half the participants.

(Of course that single purpose often still requires prep from the organiser and/or other participants.)

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