Meeting disease — How to Make Meetings More Effective?
Meeting disease — the inability to perform professional duties due to the need to participate in meetings. A person affected by this condition has a constant sense of wasted time and the meaninglessness of meetings. The disease occurs the most often in big organizations with over 100 employees. The occurrence has increased after switching to remote work as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Especially dangerous when it touches technical professions such as programmers. It can lead to fatigue, burnout, failure to provide business value and fuckup in ASAP.
…meeting on how to do fewer meetings was very productive
In my team, the problem of death by meetings often arises. This situation was so serious that we had to talk about it in a retrospective meeting. So I volunteered for the task to help my friends. In such cases, I usually talk to my dear friend Szymon Gołębiewski. He is the best PM I have ever met. I like to think that he is my mentor in the project and team management. Our meeting on how to do fewer meetings was very productive and thanks to it this text is created.
Only 3 meetings like it scattered throughout the day can completely destroy our productivity.
I made up the definition of disease of course, but doesn’t it sound like real? A meme from Reddit, which I paste below, shows perfectly that a half-hour meeting can take away our focus for 2 hours. Only 3 meetings like it scattered throughout the day can completely destroy our productivity.
However, I don’t want to say meetings are not bad. On the contrary, they are necessary to work effectively in any team.
First, you should look at the reasons for many meetings. Perhaps some of them can be eliminated by slightly changing the organization of our work. Sometimes it may be, for example, not very optimal division of responsibilities in a team or insufficient dispersion of knowledge. Another pathology is meetings that could be e-mails because they are used only to pass information or the participants are invited just in case. Sometimes our supervisor tries to take control over the team. The reason may also be very simple, we have a lot of things to do.
The more productive the meetings are, the less will be needed.
If our meetings make sense can be discussed for a long time. These are often very organization-specific issues. The second aspect that you can work on is meeting efficiency. The more productive the meetings are, the less will be needed. As in programming, we have TDD or other techniques for working with code, there are appropriate techniques for organizing meetings.
Here are some of such rules.
- The meeting title should be self-describing. Just like the names of classes, functions or variables in the code :).
- In the description of the meeting, we place the Agenda, which includes the purpose of the meeting most important issuesA planned schedule of the meeting. With an agenda, we don’t have to think about how to do it during a meeting. Moreover, the agenda helps us to decide if we have to be there.
- If we do not want to or cannot attend a meeting, but we are interested in the topic, we should be signed as an “optional” guest. This way we will remain in meeting communication.
- During the meeting, we should make notes. But that doesn’t mean only one designated convict has to do it :). It is the best if “Minutes of the Meeting” (or MoM) is written by everyone together. Google Docs are the best for this kind of cooperation. The note includes: agenda, discussed issues, decisions, actions — each action MUST be assigned to a specific person, (optional) list of participants
- After the meeting, the organizer finishes the document and sends it to all interested.
- The organizer is responsible for the course of the meeting and being on the topic. However, the other participants are obliged to support him and direct discussion to right tracks when something goes wrong.
It is easier to catch any misunderstandings when conclusions are written down and read ongoing
Taking notes certainly requires discipline and commitment. It’s so hard because benefits come to us in the future. A meeting organized, according to the above rules, becomes much more productive and takes less time. The very process of creating a note has many advantages. It increases the attention of the participants and improves the remembering of conclusions. It is easier to catch any misunderstandings when conclusions are written down and read ongoing. Also, reading the note, after is an additional filter and an opportunity for analysis. All of this is much more important when we work with a client or a difficult partner. In case of any doubts, that for sure will come, good notes help us to implement and execute the plan.
And knowing that, when we arrange everything, we will be invited only to essential meetings conducted according to the agenda. What do we do with all this time saved? Is it as purposeful as running up escalators? (Yes, I always do that :)) We can always just talk to each other. Since the beginning of the pandemic, most of the IT industry works remotely. There are no coffee or lunch breaks. So, all those precious minutes stolen from endless meetings can be devoted to catching up with each other :)
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