They usually do. Scheduling them for 5 past just means they'll actually start at 10 past.
Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
171–180 of 235 posts
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#172During the pandemic, we had a natural experiment at my previous company. Our org had started an org wise auto ‘meeting starts 5 minute past’ while others had the traditional meetings start on the hour. Also conveniently, we also had the calendar data for internal meetings, internal VC software (not zoom) db that logs the participants when they join and leave meetings and employee function db. I was serendipitously th…
> The biggest predictor for people who prefer starting late is how crowded their schedules are. Managers tend to have very crowded schedules which means they want a break between meetings, while ICs prefer not having to waste time waiting. I have had a few senior managers (at Google) who ask for all the meetings _they_ attend to start 5 minutes late. This seems 100% reasonable to me. No need for it to be an org polic…
Or they can just drop off 5 minutes before their next meeting and avoid having everyone else adapt to their preferred start time??
Even better is they only need to use that method when meetings actually run full time rather than every single meeting they are in
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#173When I lead a meeting, I start right on time no matter what. Guess what? People come on time.
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#174How about not having meetings that could have been an Email?
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People will learn to show up quickly. My bosses (leadership) are in meetings literally all day long. Them showing up 5 minutes late to an internal meeting has nothing to do with them "learning". It's entirely about priorities. Teaching them to "show up on time" does nothing and only hurts me for being obtuse with them.
Unfortunately this is the reality. If I’m on with a big external partner/client and they need to finish their thought I’m going to be late to an internal meeting. If it’s too late I will try to slack and say go ahead.
Yep. Execs who are booked pretty solid with meetings, including with customers and field teams making important decisions, will sometimes be late for or even miss meetings.
Last job, the senior guy who I knew missed our breakfast meeting to discuss a job. Turned out that he had something come up with one of the regions and his admin didn't have my cell. Ended up with the job anyway where I stayed for a long time.
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#176When I lead a meeting, I start right on time no matter what. Guess what? People come on time.
this is exactly the way to do it. i have a recurring large meeting where the first 5 minutes is ALWAYS "lets wait for a quorum". Guess what time I show up to the meeting? 5 minutes late, of course.
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The biggest predictor for people who prefer starting late is how crowded their schedules are. Managers tend to have very crowded schedules which means they want a break between meetings, while ICs prefer not having to waste time waiting. I have had a few senior managers (at Google) who ask for all the meetings _they_ attend to start 5 minutes late. This seems 100% reasonable to me. No need for it to be an org polic…
Or they can just drop off 5 minutes before their next meeting and avoid having everyone else adapt to their preferred start time?? Even better is they only need to use that method when meetings actually run full time rather than every single meeting they are in
The problem is that final decisions tend to be made in the last 30 seconds of a meeting. If you're a manager with a stake in the outcome, you can't leave the meeting until you've ensured that the outcome works for you. Leaving 5 min early is often simply not an option. While arriving 5 minutes late is. It's not an ego thing -- it's the fact that meeting leaders often let meetings run long.
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#178I work in a university environment.
The teaching model is much like that proposed by the originator of this thread. Classes are 50 minutes instead of an hour (and similar for 1.5 hour classes). The start time is 5 minutes past the hour and the end time is 5 minutes before the hour. This gives students and professors enough time to get from one lecture to another (unless they have to commute across a big campus, in which case they simply do not sign up for classes that are too close in time).
I've served on a big committee on campus that solve the timing problem simply. It starts exactly on time. Every item has a designated number of minutes. And if it appears that we will not finish on time, there is a vote on whether to extend the meeting by 30 minutes.
I realize that a lot of the discussion on this thread involves bosses and employees, which is quite a different thing, of course. There's no point in starting a meeting at a designated time if the big boss is running late.
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#179This 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.
But how is anyone supposed cultivate their personal brand and write books and substack articles about this type of meeting “hack”. Party pooper. ;)
of wasting 5 minutes?
Re: Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
#180I want Teams to show me the dollar cost of meetings. Enter an approximation of the average salary for people involved in the meeting, multiplied by the number of people in the meeting, and broadcast the cost ticking up every second to every person in the meeting. I don’t think anything else will be ans effective at reducing the number of meetings, reducing the length of meetings and reducing the number of people who…
I've worked a place that tried it. It does nothing. It's a random number that nobody cares about. Everyone quickly concludes that running a company is expensive and gets used to that. It's not their money, after all. They don't get to spend the saved money on a fancy lunch or something. It's just more money going into the pockets of owners/investors.
People have meetings because there's a need for a decision that requires conversation, and they're often late because they're coming from other meetings that ran late because they were having difficulty coming to a decision. Awareness of cost doesn't affect these at all. The decisions still need to happen.