Meetings Are A Time Sink For Remote Teams
I think the most significant benefit of remote work is peace of mind. I can’t imagine how I would work in an open space with a few dozens other people when anyone could lean over my shoulder or walk to my desk and start a conversation. Maybe that’s because I’m an introvert, but the last time I tried to work “socially” in a coworking space made me return to working from home and love it even more. Working from home is clearly not for everyone, but those of us who enjoy it get the benefit of focused work for relatively long periods of time. The only time when we can be distracted are meetings and instant messages. Minimizing the amount of those distractions is a challenge.
We have a relatively small company, only twenty-five people, but we already deal with communication issues. One of the problems is the number of things that have do be discussed by several people at a time. It’s not that every decision should always be made by a committee, but in a lot of cases, multiple people have to weigh in to choose the right path. Often we need to decide how a particular feature should be built — typically, it needs to be described by Ivan, our analyst. Then other team members read the description and point out their concerns. We used to have meetings each time, but the more intricate features we are working on, the more this approach feels wrong.
Meetings with a lot of people are counterproductive
The more people there are at the meeting, the less productive it is. You have to sit and listen to everybody else until you have your say. When six other colleagues need at least ten minutes to discuss their points of interest, you have to wait for almost an hour total. And sometimes even ten minutes per person is not enough, so these meeting tend to stretch indefinitely. Imagine how long a monthly meeting was when the whole team was there.
People get tired when they have to wait for an hour to discuss something. They start working on something else while listening to the meeting like a radio. It’s hard to do during a session in the office, but since we are a remote-only company, all you need to do is mute your microphone to do whatever you want. I must confess, I sometimes do that too — while sitting on an hour-long meeting, I can clean up my mailbox, prepare a report, or even outline a post I was going to write. All this increases the chance that something important will be missed and defeats the purpose of having everyone sit through the call.
Small talk eats up a lot of time
That’s why we’re stripping down the number of meetings where there should be more than two people now. But even that’s not enough. As social beings, we can’t just jump on the call and get straight to the point. Thus, the first ten minutes are typically devoted to small talk. Often it takes even more time. It’s not that small talk is bad, I think it’s essential for a remote team. It’s the only thing that makes you feel like part of the team because that’s the only way you can learn about your teammates, their daily lives, and challenges. But when you’re a manager or a team lead, you have only so much time to spend on calls, and small talk quickly becomes a burden and a time sink.
About a year ago, we adopted another practice that boosted the productivity of the whole team. We started discussing things in comments in Google Documents instead of doing it on a call. Of course, these discussions do not entirely replace calls, but they help keep the number of meetings as low as possible and identify exact things that have to be discussed. Nowadays, the only topics that get discussed on calls are the ones that result in long comment threads — then it’s clear that the question is tricky, and it’s better to talk it through by voice. Since often it’s two or three people who can’t agree with each other, the meeting like stays focused and is relatively short.
But what about the rest of the team members who need to stay on top of the discussion? We solved this by posting the result of the call to the very same comment thread on a document where the discussion originated. This way, everyone who will be working on the feature later will be able to see where the decision came from and what was the final verdict.
We still have monthly team calls
What about the company culture and team building? Does a team where everyone works independently falls apart? I can’t say for everyone, but this approach is working really well for us. We had a terrible situation in a company last year when we had to lay off a lot of people, but apart from that, not a single person has left the team. Maybe that’s because of the challenging and rewarding projects we’re working on, or perhaps it’s because the pay is good and the atmosphere is so friendly. Honestly, I don’t know. But not a single employee came to me to say that he or she wants to spend more time on meetings.
Well, it happened once. When we were in the process of getting rid of the meetings, I also proposed to cancel the monthly calls too. We had a tradition of getting together once a month to sum up what happened during the last four weeks, discuss plans and announce where the company is going. We had a vote, and this meeting stayed in the calendar with one change — it became optional, and whoever is busy with work or doesn’t feel like talking now can skip it.
Will it work long-term as the company grows? I hope it will. The best work environment is the one where everyone is doing their job, and there are no annoying activities required by the management that only annoy everyone. But it’s only possible when every team member is self-guided and independent enough to work on his own. I am blessed to work with people like that, but I’m not sure how hard it will be to keep this culture as the team expands in the future.
