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Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

bbc.com

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Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#61

Post by kube-system »

I'm not sure meetings in most organizations are the result of people 'asserting authority' or people 'unsure of their role'. Almost no managers are calling meetings to fulfill some hidden agenda or personal gratification. Most are called by people who are legitimately trying to solve a problem.

They're just a product of a lazy/ineffective management style.

The problem is, proper task delegation requires a lot of work:

1. understanding the problem (probably the hardest problem)

2. understanding the organization and resources

3. breaking down the problem

4. assigning tasks appropriately

5. managing time, both of the process, and the delegates of the tasks.

When a manager does this properly, it's not a very 'visible' process, so nobody really knows they've done all this work.

Alternatively, lazy managers can just call everyone into a room and let them figure out everything. It doesn't require any upfront planning or understanding of the problem. And it comes with the bonus of high-visibility.

TL;DR: meetings are the result of lazy management.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#62

Post by mistermann »

Nokinside wrote: post #36

Since this is Swedish study, I just want to point out that Swedish organizational culture is very meeting and consensus oriented. Nordic cultures may seem very similar, but their organizational cultures are different even within the same company. Others are often frustrated about Swedes and their endless meetings. Finns in the meeting are 'OK. lets do this.' and Swedes reply 'But Jan-Erik has not shared his point of…

I would love to hear similar anecdotes about how Japanese meetings tend to be.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#63

Post by cabraca »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #50
cabraca wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call your BS call :) There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings My current Project on every second wednesday: 10:00-10:30 Daily Standup 11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix 12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak 13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro 15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting…

Wait, you're actually putting that forward as a good day? That boggles my mind...if you come in at 9, get settled, you have maybe 45 minutes to work. Then, until 14-15, you have NO one hour stretch, then you have just one more stretch from 16-17...when do you actually code?? Don't you need a couple hours of focused time?

> Wait, you're actually putting that forward as a good day?

sure. Its better this way. otherwise i would have those meetings scattered across a complete week. and tbh, days like this come every two weeks. its not every day. most days its 15min daily standup in the morning and sometimes a refinement of 30m.

>...when do you actually code??

i come in at around 7-7:30, code until ~10, go home after the last meeting.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#64

Post by cabraca »

t34543 wrote: post #49
cabraca wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call your BS call :) There is nothing better than a day with nicely spaced meetings My current Project on every second wednesday: 10:00-10:30 Daily Standup 11:00-12:00 Architect Jour Fix 12:00-12:30 Lunchbreak 13:00-14:00 Sprint Retro 15:00-16:00 Sprint Planning Most of the gaps have a reason (conflicting meetings, etc) We use those gaps to "transfer knowledge". That basically means we sit in the cafeteria chatting…

Terrifying schedule. I can handle maybe an hour of two of meetings per day, max two days per week. Daily meetings are a non starter for me.

its not daily. its one day every two weeks.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#65

Post by kstenerud »

In other words, more and more people are being employed in pointless jobs.

There isn't enough actual work to go around, but everyone needs to be "employed". And since they subconsciously know that their jobs are pointless, they need to justify their existence through posturing and status and "visibility" and report production (which nobody reads) and endless meetings. Lots of activity, but little actual achievement. Middle management only ever grows @1, because everyone in the middle is in the same boat, and having more people under you makes you more important and less likely to lose your job or have your department cut.

@1: With the exception of the massive job purges the mega-corporations do once a decade or so.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#66

Post by stjohnswarts »

jt2190 wrote: post #23
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…

> the asynchronous “always on, always connected” style Nit: I've always heard this called synchronous , since in this style work is performed immediately, rather than queued up to wait for execution at a scheduled time.

I don't agree, there is nothing requiring them being synchronous since anyone can send a message at anytime and the response can be delayed an arbitrary amount of time unlike a meeting which has a definite start and stop. That certainly sounds asynchronous to me.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#67

Post by crustacean »

asaph wrote: post #5

People should decline pointless meetings.

If my meetings happened as described with no one rescheduling or derailing them then actually my meeting life would be fine.

I want to go to the meetings described on my calendar.

But nearly every time “It’s a trap!”

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#68

Post by dasmoth »

cabraca wrote: post #64
t34543 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrifying schedule. I can handle maybe an hour of two of meetings per day, max two days per week. Daily meetings are a non starter for me.

its not daily. its one day every two weeks.

The standup is still daily though, right?

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#69

Post by Jd »

mipmap04 wrote: post #13
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

One of my employers actively discouraged meetings and phone calls. They wanted everything done through Slack and email. It felt great at first. Having a wide-open calendar and knowing that random managers can’t pull you into a waste of time meeting seems like a dream come true. However, we quickly learned that removing meetings doesn’t removed the need for communication. Instead of scheduled meetings, our Slack chann…

I've found that, with the exception of daily stand-ups, all meetings must have a bullet point agenda and notes should be sent out for each meeting with risks, action items, issues and ownership of those items. If both of those things are lacking, I doubt how useful the meeting will be or was.

Ever since I started ending time budgeting for each agenda item I've never looked back.

My agendas look like this:

(1) Two word emotional check in [Lead:Jd][budget: 5 minutes, actual: ]

(2) How did sprint one go? [Lead:Mark][budget: 7 minutes, actual: ]

(3) Should we have pizza or chinese food for lunch? [Lead:Francis][budget: 3 minutes, actual: ]

I send out the agendas in advance for anyone to PM me to add something.

Then I use a stop timer to track how many minutes were used per agenda and send it along with the minute meetings and action items post-meetings. Action items are almost always tracked some sort of issue tracker but I use different ones for different projects.

Re: Pointless work meetings 'really a form of therapy'

#70

Post by crustacean »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #52
asaph wrote: post #5

People should decline pointless meetings.

An interesting idea...supposedly at Tesla and SpaceX, Elon recommended that anyone who found a meeting to be pointless should get up and leave immediately. I don't know if that's still the practice, maybe someone from those companies can chime in.

That has presumably worked _for Elon_...
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