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No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#121

Post by theshrike79 »

refurb wrote: post #97
LunaSea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.

You've never been in an office and had a productive, random interaction with a coworker? Like, never? I've had it happen on a regular basis. I see someone and suddenly remember to tell them "oh, I did some work on that long ago, I'll share it with you" or you overhear a conversation about a topic you didn't know they were looking at?

You missed the "online" bit in the comment you replied to.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#122

Post by philbo »

quacksilver wrote: post #102

As a junior i often wrote "Hi, do you have a moment? (ok if not)" in slack (or lync at the time) to senior people when I had questions. I then didn't expect a reply unless the senior person was not busy or bored. If no reply within 5 mins I would ask the next person. I did this when I had a question that perhaps 20 people who I knew could answer, though I had no way of telling who (if anyone) was free to chat somethi…

The optimal approach is to ask your question in a public channel.

Then all 20 people get to see it at once, they can see if someone else already responded and other people on the team who may have been wondering about something similar also get to see the question and the answer(s).

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#123

Post by sensanaty »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

First off: Are water coolers even a thing still? At least in NL we just bring our own bottles and use the tap to refill it :p

Second, I've not once in my life had a productive "water cooler" conversation. Not a single time, it's pretty much always just socialization about literally anything other than work. Same with lunch, people don't want to talk about work during their free time, and they don't. I've certainly never heard of anyone having a sudden eureka moment spontaneously like that either, and if they do these days they'll just post it in slack so that people can refer back to it rather than it disappearing into the ether as soon as the convo ends.

As for the idea thing, I can't say I've ever had many such a drastic PR where the approach was completely 180 degrees from what the PR is doing, and even in the rare occasions those do occur, both parties are usually more than okay with then hopping onto a short (meaning max 15 minutes, not some hour long monstrosity of a "quick chat") call to align.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#124

Post by LunaSea »

refurb wrote: post #97
LunaSea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.

You've never been in an office and had a productive, random interaction with a coworker? Like, never? I've had it happen on a regular basis. I see someone and suddenly remember to tell them "oh, I did some work on that long ago, I'll share it with you" or you overhear a conversation about a topic you didn't know they were looking at?

> You've never been in an office and had a productive, random interaction with a coworker?

I absolutely did have these interactions but simply not online.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#125

Post by space_oddity »

daghamm wrote: post #33

This may sound reasonable, but the world is not black and white. If we turn every quick question into a complete meeting with agenda and whatnot, the organisation will become extremly bureaucratic. And at some point people will start making guesses instead of reaching out to experts because it is just too much work. So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best…

Finding a middle ground where communication is both efficient and respectful of individual needs is key

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#126

Post by repeekad »

prmoustache wrote: post #35
rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

That is not incompatible with adding some context in the "quick call invite". Even when I was working from the office, sometimes I would have to say no to someone who was reaching out to me or bumping into me in front of the water fountain because I was in the middle of something. In that case I would just ask to send me a message with some context and I would go back to him/her when I had more time to dedicate on th…

Maybe not incompatible but certainly diminished, the idea is you randomly stumble upon someone’s work or ideas who you wouldn’t have otherwise talked to if it needed to be scheduled, personally I think lunch in person is where this shines the most

Productivity doesn’t go down with fully remote work, but I think the kind of creativity that organically comes from ideas being constantly shared and discussed does

To be clear, I don’t think it’s always people’s job to be creative, and company’s should absolutely have roles for people who can work remotely who just join scheduled meetings and execute “the plan”

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#127

Post by qbxk »

I get the sense of this, and it's ok, too draconian. Maybe works for people like you if everybody is like you

But sometimes the question is fuzzy, to me "hey got a minute?" means "I'm about to unload something confusing on you, and I don't want to break your flow state, so let me know when you have a minute to take it"

I'm a tech like the author, and personally I'd prefer not to see all the details up front, because I can't control my flow and I'll start scratching at their problem right away even though I was busy doing something. I'd rather have the sign lit up that says they need help, WITHOUT KNOWING what it is, and then when I'm ready to help them, I'll find out. If it means I need to check on some stuff first, then fine, we'll set a meeting a for it at some point in the future (that's now the agenda), even if it's just "Let me get back to you in an hour about that"

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#128

Post by Vinnl »

prepend wrote: post #96
LunaSea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.

Forced is horrible. But consensual is great.

I think they meant "forced" as in "artificial" (as in: "hey, let's start a video call to pretend we're at the watercooler"), rather than "mandated by management".

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#129

Post by LunaSea »

axitanull wrote: post #85
LunaSea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience forced online water cooler talk has never worked and was always incredibly awkward and boring.

Surely the C-suites of the company will employ whatever brilliant ideas that we talk over the water cooler. The water cooler is the fountain of innovation after all. Perhaps they should put all the water coolers in the executives' offices, so they can listen to all the brilliant conversations that take place at the water cooler.

Paid work holiday trips or conferences could simulate this missing social element for remote teams.

Ironically enough it would be by bringing them back together (but maybe in a more fun way than a regular office).

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#130

Post by Quothling »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

I agree with your take on working remote and how it can hinder spontaneous "group creativity", though I'd argue that the loss of the smoke break did a lot more damage to this than remote work. With that out of the way I just want to say that in decades I've never had a "quick call" which wasn't a humongous waste of my time.

It's always some project manager or business process or whatever person who wants to talk about something they don't quite understand on behalf of someone from the business. I regret never doing the statistics on it, but if I had to guess I'd say that 9/10 times they could have simply forwarded the email from the "someone" instead of being the middleman. I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do a "quick call" without telling someone the reason first. I'm perfectly fine with taking a call with a co-worker who wants to discuss something they're not sure about, but then they'll ask me "hey, can we talk about X because I'd like your input". Which isn't a "quick call" in my book. I don't mind meetings either, but I dislike meetings which are solely there to make pseudo workers or bad middle managers feel like they accomplish something. If there are more than 3 people attending a meeting then you can be pretty sure it'll be a waste of time. If there is no agenda you're going down the road of the "quick call" which is essentially that initiator hasn't done their due diligence beforehand.

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