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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?

#51

Post by thesuitonym »

keiferski wrote: post #10

First, a meeting is primarily not a way to spread knowledge. Knowledge should be spread in a format that is more resilient to time than our memories (which are surprisingly untrustworthy over even tiny time scales). For example; written text. The greatest benefit of text is that it can be asynchronously consumed, multiple times. Meetings are primarily for two things: I think this makes sense in the abstract but not a…

I think that says more about Slack than it does about meetings or written communication. Slack is meant for short, almost-but-not-quite ephemeral dialog. It's great for giving a quick blast of information, updating others, and seeing if someone is available for a call (Not by their status, but by asking), but too many people also see it as a repository of information, which is not what it's meant to be.

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

#52

Post by theideaofcoffee »

People seemed to be brainwashed into thinking that meetings are ... actually necessary. If people can build the Linux kernel without meetings, solely over email, then your $1.99 app, or your project requiring coordinating more than two people can be done the same way. Write it down, debate and argue in text so anyone interested can see what's going on. There's your minutes, your agenda, your invite for future ones right there. Now go back to work (or continue, since you didn't have to leave it in the first place) and stop bothering people.

I would praise any leader that has the courage to call the meeting spade a spade knowing they're just corporate-sanctioned babysitting exercises, myth to be discarded.

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

#53

Post by jerf »

holowoodman wrote: post #39

Btw, question to the wisdom of HN: Good meetings need minutes. Is there a minutes taking tool that does automatically list the attendants and their join/leave times, allow me to create items like TODO, DECISION, POLL, DISCUSS_MORE, GET_INFO, BLOCKER that will then be tabulated and cross-referenced automatically across more than one meeting? And added to the TODO-lists of participants referenced? Preferrably somewhat…

They're coming online with all this AI stuff. Zoom has an integrated one that I've used a few times, and even explicitly directed the AI to add things to the work items which has worked so far, though I haven't tried it very often to know how reliable that is.

But it's still early days... Zoom's is still really just "let's throw a transcription of the meeting at an LLM with a system prompt and let the chips fall where they may" rather than any sort of major integration yet that would let you do anything like get a live link to your bug tracker to propose a bug based on the conversation pre-filled with the LLM's best guess of the summary of your conversation or anything.

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

#54

Post by sunscream89 »

I walked into nearly every meeting I ever attended with a list and my working journal. If I have something important to share I bring a few copies of my highlights or just list things about other activities that I care about.

I’m an introspective introvert who found this the one time to hear everyone else’s pulse.

As for the meeting, each culture will evolve into what works for those involved. Leadership and horizontal stake factors shape how people share their views and listen.

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

#55

Post by nunez »

nxpnsv wrote: post #43

Rant: I hate brainstorming meetings. A manager who wants to feel like they are doing something invite a mix of one or two experts, a clueless pm, engineers from an unrelated project, and handful of random ones hers. Next, with zero preparation we’re supposed to come up with groundbreaking new ideas. Then there is some voting and finally waiting for a summary or gameplay that’s postponed until the heat death of the un…

I actually enjoy brainstorming meetings in-person. These actually feel like a "brainstorm" when they're done right.

Brainstorming meetings over Zoom, on the other hand...

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

#58

Post by nickdothutton »

In my experience, a lot of people call a meeting to try and make something happen. The thing _should_ be happening already but the team is not working efficiency in a well-thought-out manner. Rather than figure out what the real problem is with the working practices, or recognising some genuinely novel feature of the situation that is blocking progress, they resort just booking meeting after meeting until somehow it is resolved. I don't attend meetings without an agenda and at least a (sometimes optimistic) list of what the outputs of the meeting should be. Decision on X. Routes of investigation for Y. Outline plan on Z.

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

#59

Post by pflenker »

I have two separate points to add to this. Point 1. During the pandemic, I learned that meetings also support team cohesion. We experimented with less meetings, but quickly got to a point where we restored at least _some_ meetings to ensure we'd stay functional as a team. This still matters given that we're still working from home 60-80% of the time.

Point 2. The meeting host needs to be able to answer the following questions for every invitee, and in turn, every invitee needs to know the answer to the following questions: 1) What is it that this person can _contribute to_ the meeting? 2) What is it that this person can _learn from_ the meeting?

With these two questions in mind, everything else becomes less important. For example, if everyone is clear about these two things, the meeting doesn't even need a description (or the other way around: if the answers to these questions are unclear, the meeting description can help answer them)

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

#60

Post by chasd00 »

I’ve spent probably 60-70% of my day in meetings for the past 5 years. Article makes some good points. An agenda in the invite, moderator+the authority to tell _anyone_ on the call to stfu, minutes, and ending on time.

Some things I’d add: 1. Written next steps/follow-ups for what happens after the meeting 2. Due dates for next steps and the consequences for missing due dates 3. A log of decisions made and by whom 4. And just a general observation that if there are more than 10 people in the meeting it should be more like a webinar (one way information flow) vs a discussion with decisions/solutions expected.

Edit: 99.9% of my meetings are teams calls. Maybe 20 in person meetings in the past 5 years so consider that when reading my suggestions above.

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