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No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#71

Post by joncrocks »

ckastner wrote: post #8

For larger enterprises with complex org charts, I consider an agenda one of two invaluable tools for meetings, the other being post-meeting minutes including a RACI chart. If someone can't think up a few bullet points for a meeting in advance, that person has not prepared for their meeting, and will waste some of the participant's time. Not creating (one-line) minutes that most importantly include decisions that have…

Agenda, expected outcomes.

Everyone should know going in what is being discussed and what the expectations are around the objective of the meeting.

If you don't have these, you have no idea if it will be a productive meeting.

And don't forget https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#72

Post by spacebacon »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #51
DebtDeflation wrote: post #41

I will never understand people who write "Hello" or "Hi Joe" in Slack and then just wait. It has to be some form of mental illness.

Honestly, I just ignore the conversation until they post something meaningful.

The “hey Joe” catalyst types often expect a “I got that X for you” response.

They correctly assume you don’t need a public reminder for your responsibilities so they opt for a subtle nudge.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#73

Post by Gravityloss »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

I notice I often breathe deeply after a telecon. As if I was holding my breath during it. Even if the telecon was quite laid back. It doesn't happen in water cooler talks. Have there been studies about what causes this, or even how to alleviate?

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#74

Post by widowlark »

prmoustache wrote: post #63
tialaramex wrote: post #50

I endorse the general thrust of this post, however: Calls can be much more effective than messaging for detecting and handling the XY problem now that users can easily screen share, because you can often see why the user wanted to do X, not just (as in their two lines of text) that they wanted to do X, and you may be able to solve Y and make them happier.

It is not about avoiding calls but avoiding calls without context.

But the chilling effect it has on cross-team interactions leads to the same result.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#75

Post by axitanull »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

Why is it that every time someone tried to push RTO agenda in a thread, "water cooler talk" has always been pushed like it is one of most important thing in a job?

Is "water cooler talk" the new "open office layout"?

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#76

Post by Simon_ORourke »

Meetings without an agenda and a published list of minutes and actions are effectively theft. You're stealing people's time and with that company resources.

However, having said that I've found these kind of "Hi can we chat" meetings are great ways of flagging corporate sociopaths and general losers. They make it their career to schedule as many of these as possible to get out of doing other work.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#77

Post by throwawaysleep »

rethab wrote: post #29

We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…

I like my isolation. As an employee with minimal stake in the outcome of my teams, I don’t ever want to discuss ideas in the workplace. I’ll walk the other way around the office to avoid such a chat.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#78

Post by projektfu »

There is definitely culture clash in this. I think it is probably better to normalize "available" and "unavailable" spans for the knowledge workers who need flow to work effectively. (And I am one.) If my plan was to write a prototype or debug a difficult problem, it doesn't matter if I'm expected to respond to "Hello" or "Hello, ", I lose my flow and the job will be delayed. I might even end up permanently distracted on something else. Better would be to connect a pomodoro timer to status that says "Available at " when the timer starts. Then I could respond to "hello" and take a quick call and ask the meeting planner to make an agenda.

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#79

Post by akoboldfrying »

I sympathise with some of this, but the tone is unbearable.

>Don't worry, I'm not mad at you. Those are common mistakes that people make

Calling a common and natural communication style that is not your preferred communication style objectively a "mistake". Charming.

>Maybe you work in an environment where productivity is low, so everyone has time to jump on a quick call or chat with you any time you ask.

"But I don't, because I'm amazing. You've probably heard of me."

Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda

#80

Post by lucideer »

No hello is very reasonable, but only to a point. It's a specific adaptation to asynchronous communication that kicked off in the IRC days where channel idling was common - async is a radically different form of comms to in-person & this etiquette aids in adapting to those differences.

But it's important to remember that it is an adaptation for a specific comms medium & applying it too broadly may really just be a way of shirking socialisation. That's fine if you're most productive as an engineer working alone on your fully-self-contained owned project, but in most cases collaboration is beneficial. Collaboration introduces communication inefficiencies but its a known trade-off.

Especially extending this barrier-to-entry to other things like calls (verbal comms) & meetings (in-person) can lead to significant inaccessibility, exclusion & siloing. It's worth stepping back & looking at problems you may be trying to solve here: e.g. too-many-meetings or long meeting run-on. These are problems that frankly this doesn't do anything to solve whatsoever; you'll just end up with managers setting boilerplate agendas for the same "too many long meetings" & meanwhile some of the peers you may need to have a valuable short meet with will be too hung up by your requirements to contact you at all.

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