Link is dead. Did anyone make a copy that can reupload?
How to Attend Meetings
151–160 of 193 posts
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#152How to Attend Meetings - Internal Guidelines from A.G. Sulzberger's Racial Science and Phrenology Blog
I tried googling parts of that and could not find it. Is it online?
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#153I agree with each and every single slide in this presentation; I do. I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. Especially, "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; got it. --- For decades, I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested that we have solid outcomes. None of…
> I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. My favourite part of climbing the corporate ladder is finally having enough clout to just say "no". > I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested Try "I am unable to attend meeting without an agenda. Let me know when one has been posted." in your decline…
> My favourite part of climbing the corporate ladder is finally having enough clout to just say "no".
But the thing is, in big companies, you can keep climbing all your life and never reach that level. You can be a VP and it still doesn't matter, because you're one of several hundred VPs in a company that values lawsuit-proof consistency over giving executives infinite latitude. You're still dealing with the same spreadsheets, processes, and meetings as everyone else. At best, you might be able to send your minions to some, but that doesn't solve the issue, it just messes up someone else's day.
In a company of several hundred people, on the other hand, you don't really need to climb far because relatively little is set in stone. So to folks who are at Amazon, Microsoft, or Google, and who're waiting for the day when they're finally free to say "no" to overhead, I have bad news.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#154Where did this come from? Source? Date (2024?) Brian doesn't work at NYT anymore I don't think
And google now says it has been removed.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, I can probably rephrase things to somehow eventually pin you down to admitting that maybe some meetings are worthwhile or otherwise necessary.
I’m looking for where GP or even the original presentation said that no meetings were worthwhile or otherwise necessary. Can you help me find it?
The context I'm pulling in is by the caps in the comment I initially replied to, would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING. Note the caps.
As far as the GP, what I'm getting at is that they are tediously nitpicking my phrasing rather than addressing my point. If there are some meetings that make sense to spend your time on, (in the context of my comment) what the fuck does it matter if there are also some that it doesn't.
If they think they have never spent their time well on a meeting, an explication of that would be more interesting than saying that they can find better things to do than attend some meetings.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that’s why the document had some suggested pushback to meeting invites (e.g. “what’s the agenda so I can prepare”)
Yep! And, I send that exact message/email all the time in good faith. But, even with that - if someone just wants to talk, trying to nail them down on a topic can be _seen_ as obstructive, even though it's productive. Unfortunately, lots of people who schedule meetings just want to talk with not much outcome. I'm being pedantic, but my experienced inverse of these slides is that meetings are the "social" part of work…
In my experience, sometimes the job is just to talk and socialize — eg, with sister teams or stakeholders.
For my own sanity, I at least try to accurately label those… which is how my calendar usually fills with “1:1”, “coffee”, “sync”, etc. Maybe it’s pedantic, but the accurate labels help my sanity by letting me know which meetings I can show up without prep, a coffee and cookie, and push if things get busy.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#157I agree with each and every single slide in this presentation; I do. I also know that in each and every company I have ever worked for, none of this is going to fly. Especially, "Attending meetings is a choice." Just like paying taxes is a choice; got it. --- For decades, I have been asking for agendas; I have asked for clarification on what to do to prepare; I have even suggested that we have solid outcomes. None of…
I can smell a startup coming on...
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#158The problem with time-bounding is it becomes an obsession with meeting optimization, and the content of the meeting comes secondary. "Ok let's quickly do X Y and Z so the meeting can be over and we can be outta here!" "Hey, it's been 8 minutes and we have only allocated 30 so we need to move to the next topic." Letting meetings be dictated by the clock has the effect of making them feel a bit like reading an executiv…
As someone who leads meetings and sets agendas, I’ve basically accepted there is no perfect meeting for everyone. I regularly get oscillating feedback. One day I’ll hear “We spent too long on a couple of topics and didn’t get to enough topics” then if we try to start limiting topics to a certain amount of time I’ll hear “we never actually _solve_ anything, it’s all just too high level!”. The best I can do when I lead…
> if we try to start limiting topics to a certain amount of time I’ll hear “we never actually _solve_ anything, it’s all just too high level!”.
You shouldn't ever be solving things live in a meeting, unless it's a 5 second "flip the switch" fix.
99% of fixing from my experience comes from deep work by an IC or 1 on 1 pair collaboration calls by teammates who work great together.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#159Anyone get the slideshow before it was taken down? Link no longer works.
Re: How to Attend Meetings
#160Anyone get the slideshow before it was taken down? Link no longer works.
I've searched everywhere and it seems gone forever. It was a hell of a slide deck and I wish I had downloaded it before it got taken down. I'd potentially pay money to see it again.