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How to Attend Meetings

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Re: How to Attend Meetings

#51

Post by grvdrm »

Could NYT also produce two more guides?

1. How To Use Teams/Slack/Etc.

2. How To Use Email

Meeting optimization is great, but I don't want to spend my entire day in Teams/Slack messages with people that start messages saying "hi" with no follow-up.

Same with email. Email is not chat! Don't send me 10 1-line emails a day. Call me instead. Or send me 1 10-line email. Make email intentional and high-value.

Point being: if any one of (1) email, or (2) chat, or (3) meetings is not working well, I bet you have problems in either or both of the others.

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#52

Post by eXpl0it3r »

parliament32 wrote: post #34
garciasn wrote: post #7

I 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…

And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting.

Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#53

Post by JumpCrisscross »

garciasn wrote: post #15
dasil003 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a reductive statement. Yes there are always some unproductive meetings one has to attend. On the other hand, you'd be surprised how many leaders and middle-managers viscerally understand the cost of low-value meetings, and are doing everything they can to empower individuals to manage their own time. They might not call bullshit in a group setting (after all, as the slides call out: critical feedback shou…

I have worked at many companies over my career. From 10s of thousands, to thousands, to hundreds, to tens of employees. There wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines. Clearly your experience is different and that's absolutely awesome; consider yourself incredibly fortunate.

> wasn't a SINGLE ONE that would tolerate someone declining EVERY MEETING when the culture does not align to the ideals this presentation outlines

Well yes, if the culture doesn't allow it then it's not going to happen. That doesn't mean those cultures don't exist or that they can't be created, even if just in a pocket

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#54

Post by gabeh »

I remember Merlin Mann, of "Inbox Zero" fame, coming to Twitter to talk about improving meetings around 2010. His list was a superset of this and forever shaped my approach to meetings. The change management part of fixing this behavior is a much heavier lift than you might expect. These are behaviors that are engrained well before the current environment.

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#55

Post by wiseowise »

eXpl0it3r wrote: post #52
parliament32 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.

> And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting.

Unless your head is on the line, why do you care?

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#56

Post by arjie »

wswope wrote: post #21
arjie wrote: post #18

I wonder if the (AFAIK original to) Bridgewater technique of recording all meetings will spread. One thing I think that would have helped me quite a bit is to have a transcript (with speakers annotated) of a meeting. With a sufficiently advanced LLM summarizing, I could probably a handle a much larger volume of meetings where I needed to know what was going on just as a tail-risk capturer. e.g. if someone has a meeti…

Whisper-X does speaker-annotated transcripts nicely. I’ve used it for running multi-hour TTRPG sessions with friends and it worked hassle-free after setup. https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX

Terrific. Thank you!

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#57

Post by wiseowise »

dasil003 wrote: post #11
garciasn wrote: post #7

I 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…

That's such a reductive statement. Yes there are always some unproductive meetings one has to attend. On the other hand, you'd be surprised how many leaders and middle-managers viscerally understand the cost of low-value meetings, and are doing everything they can to empower individuals to manage their own time. They might not call bullshit in a group setting (after all, as the slides call out: critical feedback shou…

> empower individuals

Eye roll

How to detect a "leader".

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#58

Post by wiseowise »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #33

Elephant in the room: what about meetings where the purpose is to receive updates, maintain context on project progress, etc.? Yes, sometimes (often!) these meetings can be emails or messages — but sometimes it's important to be able to ask or even hear others ask questions, and to get a sense of how people are feeling directly. This seems to be missed by the author.

> Elephant in the room: what about meetings where the purpose is to receive updates, maintain context on project progress, etc.? Yes, sometimes (often!) these meetings can be emails or messages — but sometimes it's important to be able to ask or even hear others ask questions, and to get a sense of how people are feeling directly.

No, there are none. Whoever does those needs to check their fucking ego and just send an email/update md file like a normal human.

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#59

Post by delusional »

wiseowise wrote: post #55
eXpl0it3r wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.

> And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Unless your head is on the line, why do you care?

Because caring about your work, the people around you, and the quite frankly stuff in general is healthy and gives life meaning.

If you go somewhere 8 hours a day, you'd like that place to matter to you. Anything else is just depressing.

Re: How to Attend Meetings

#60

Post by makeitdouble »

wiseowise wrote: post #55
eXpl0it3r wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Sometimes it's not just about whether others think you should be there.

> And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting. Unless your head is on the line, why do you care?

Someone explicitely asked for your input, you refused and they fucked up. Your head might nor roll, but you won't be unscaved either. If it's not as your responsibility, it will be by the size and impact of the fuckup.

IMHO it'l should be the same approach as any other human communication: not everything can be fixed, and at some point you'll need to compromise.

Some people talk slowly, will you refuse to listen to them if they don't speed up to some given wpm ? Some take time to come to their actual point. It might be utterly uncomfortable, but if they actually tend to have very good points, you'll probably bear with it.

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