131–140 of 235 posts
Back to back meetings?! Why on earth would you do that?
I don't know about others but if I'm gonna have 3 meetings in a day, I'd take them back-to-back anyday. Then the rest of my day is available for focus work.
Fixed time makes it so much easier to reason than random stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the start of the first meeting, you annouce that you need to leave at 1:50 and ask the meeting to respect that.
I'd rather have a 5-minute break built-in for everyone by starting 5-past and actually enforce meeting end-times. Behaviors would change if people knew they had 25 or 55 minutes for a meeting and that folks would just leave when the time is up.
I think the point is to reduce meeting time from 60 minutes to 55 or even 50 and be firm about it. People need to expect to start and end on time; giving them a natural break between helps make this happen even for people whose job requires them to be in back-to-back meetings.
Personally, I think starting on the hour (or half-hour, etc) and ending "early" is better, because it tends to sync well with the calendars of external folks.
But in the end, moving start or end time is only part of the solution. This is a time-management problem, and in addition to constraining the available time, it also needs proper management of the available time within the meeting.
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I'm absolutely baffled by colleague who somehow manage to be five minutes late to an online meeting while working from home. Because you're right, you get a reminder 10 - 15 minutes in advance, you just need to click the join meeting button, you're already at the computer. We have, for remote meetings, a five minute buffer at the start of every meeting, for people to "settle in" makes no sense, just start the meeting…
> So key indicators of a bad meeting is: runs more than 60 minutes, no meeting plan, documents or talking points provided in advance, more than five people (unless the meeting is more of a briefing). So 99% of my meetings?
This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel like I’m surrounded by idiots. Waiting for attendance is simply scheduled into the agenda. The first 5 minutes of the agenda is reserved for quorum. There is absolutely no need for making it any more complicated, or playing games with the scheduled time like the post suggests. Childish nonsense.
> Starts meeting after 5 minutes
"Uhm, shall we wait for Jeff?"
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'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.
In my experience the unrelated discussion is usually the only fun and tangible value I get out of most meetings
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So key indicators of a bad meeting is: runs more than 60 minutes, no meeting plan, documents or talking points provided in advance, more than five people (unless the meeting is more of a briefing). So 99% of my meetings?
Seems about right, but wouldn't you agree that the majority of those meetings either could have been an email, or could have been handled in 20% of the time, if they had been planed?
#leadership is really sending me on this one
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That almost sounds insulting. Like management is the only party with vision, drive and a goal and everybody else is just there to help. When often management just manages and true innovation really comes from people of all positions.
True. It is part of the general industrial ritual of reducing workers to a number or a letter combination. That way, managers reduce the emotional attachment to the people, and they can fire them more easily. If, instead, you would be Tom, Bill and Biff, there is a risk that the manager would build attachment, and make it harder to treat you bad. If you're IC1, IC2 and IC3, you can be exchanged like machine parts whe…