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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?

#141

Post by alach11 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #128
alach11 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone had to take an online class (about 8 hours) about effective meetings As soon as I read this line I grimaced. This is a clear sign of an organization that doesn't respect peoples' time. The class should be an email (and proper follow-up by the management chain) establishing three rules: - Meetings must have an agenda - After a meeting, there must be a follow-up email describing what was decided and any acti…

The point of mandatory classes isn't about respecting time or being efficient. It's there to make 100% clear that you can't say "I didn't know" when you do something that was explicitly explained in the online class. So now if a new middle-manager has an agendaless meeting, nobody shows up and they throw a massive fit - people can point at the class and say "It's company policy, deal with it"

Sure. But there are plenty of ways to achieve the same outcome without wasting 8 hours of time for every employee. And once you scale this across all the aspects of company policy/culture you want push, mandatory training classes become incredibly inefficient.

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

#142

Post by Etheryte »

suslik wrote: post #15
Etheryte wrote: post #7

I think this misses the mark for why people join. We're talking about a professional setting here, I'm coming to your meeting because you invited me to join, not because of fear of missing out (on what?). All the points given in the article are good, but it misses the most important one: if you're hosting a meeting, only invite people who MUST [0] be there. If the meeting could still take place and be useful without…

> if you're hosting a meeting, only invite people who MUST [0] be there. If the meeting could still take place and be useful without someone, don't invite them just to listen in. I don't think this advice is generic - there can be different perspectives here. In a managerial role in a large corpo, doing what could be crudely characterized as office politics, I often have this sort of FOMO - missing out on new initiat…

This is a good point and you're right. My take was too narrow based on the types of companies I've been lucky enough to work at.

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

#143

Post by nitwit005 »

At least for the efficient part of this, I've always felt the fix is just a display of the estimated cost of the meeting (perhaps an average or lower bound to avoid revealing pay).

The same people who will fuss over $20 lunch expense limits will happily spend thousands on meetings without a thought.

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

#144

Post by spauldo »

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…

Tea party brings up images of little girls and stuffed animals around a table to my American mind, but I get what you mean.

My team has a weekly meeting with no management allowed and no agenda. I bring up anything important right at the start, then we go around and give everyone a chance to say what they're working on. No assignments are given out, but people who need help with something can ask and usually get it.

The main purpose of the meeting is to just keep everyone updated on what the rest of the team is doing and give us some water-cooler time. It makes up, in a small way, for the lack of personal interaction we have since going remote. I keep management out because I want us to be free to speak our minds.

The rest of our meetings are more formal and focused and get more actual work done, but without the "tea party" (I'm starting to like that term) we start losing cohesion as a team.

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

#145

Post by theshrike79 »

alach11 wrote: post #141
theshrike79 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of mandatory classes isn't about respecting time or being efficient. It's there to make 100% clear that you can't say "I didn't know" when you do something that was explicitly explained in the online class. So now if a new middle-manager has an agendaless meeting, nobody shows up and they throw a massive fit - people can point at the class and say "It's company policy, deal with it"

Sure. But there are plenty of ways to achieve the same outcome without wasting 8 hours of time for every employee. And once you scale this across all the aspects of company policy/culture you want push, mandatory training classes become incredibly inefficient.

Do you have a list of these "plenty of ways"? I'd seriously want to know so I can suggest them in my company.

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

#146

Post by indoordin0saur »

yencabulator wrote: post #106
indoordin0saur wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. This lack of fear comes from (1) being competent and productive, (2) being the expert in critical systems; the company would have a bad time if I was gone, (3) being hard to replace (it recently took us 6 months to find a second member of my team), (4) having good options available in the job market if I were to be fired.

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

#147

Post by miljanm »

alach11 wrote: post #141
theshrike79 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of mandatory classes isn't about respecting time or being efficient. It's there to make 100% clear that you can't say "I didn't know" when you do something that was explicitly explained in the online class. So now if a new middle-manager has an agendaless meeting, nobody shows up and they throw a massive fit - people can point at the class and say "It's company policy, deal with it"

Sure. But there are plenty of ways to achieve the same outcome without wasting 8 hours of time for every employee. And once you scale this across all the aspects of company policy/culture you want push, mandatory training classes become incredibly inefficient.

employee's time is company's time, so no time wasted
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