What are WoPEs and how to escape them?

Since we are going more and more on a “meta” office phase because distribuated teams or pandemies… for better or worse we are using more and more communication tools as teams, zoom, slack,….

These tools can help us to better work and also to have more time for personal stuff, like familly and friends.

But, their is a dark side on these communication tools. Today, I will talk you about the WoPEs.

What is a WoPE?

A WoPE is a kind of virtual meeting where you are invited and you just listen the discussion between people about a subject. At the end of the meeting there is no conclusion just a next step “schedule another meeting to continue talking about the subject”.

WoPE = Worse Podcast Ever

This kind of meetings drain the energy and time of the team, some meeting organizers think that only by inviting the people the subject will be resolved. Spoiler alert: They are wrong.

A meeting need to be prepare and justify the time consume by the participants.

I will share with you basic checklist that help me :

• Define the outcome of the meeting. This is key to identify the next points, it can be for example a document or a decision. Try to keep it simple and focus on 1 or 2 outcomes per meeting. This will shorten the meetings you organise and keep the participats more focus and engaged during the meeting. Less is more.
• Define the inputs of the meeting. This will be pulled by the targeted outcome. Some examples can be documents and/or decisions of others meetings.
• Define the participants of the meeting. This start by defining the mandatory participants, does who you need to get the outcome that you define at the first point of the checklist. Advise if the mandatory participants aren’t on the meeting postpone it dont force the other participants to stay on a meeting without outcome. Give them back their time.
• Before sending the meeting, double check if this meeting can be remplace by a message (asynchronous communication). In these days with all the sources of communication, generally we prefer the asynchronimous communication this can help someones (including my self) to better organise my daily work. Just precise if the answer is blocking a subject and/ the due date for the answer.
• If you still think that a meeting is required. Define the date and time for the meeting. Be sure that at least the mandatory participants are available. and for the optional participants you can offer if possible the record of the meeting.

I hope this checklist will help you avoid the WoPEs and give you back the control of your time and concentration on what gives value to you and your collegues.