Use meetings as a last resort
Has this ever happened to you?
You’re sitting at your desk, and you decide to check your emails. Among other things, you see a Google Calendar invitation called “Important meeting about project X”. There’s no information about the meeting anywhere to be found, and it’s happening early tomorrow morning. You’re not even involved in the project at this point, but it’s someone with a fairly important position in the company that sent you the invite, so you decide you will go because it will probably be important — otherwise, they wouldn’t have invited you… right?
You get to the meeting, and there are 7 other people already sitting down, while 14 were invited in total. You ask your colleague if he knows what this meeting is about, but he has no idea either. The facilitator is 5 minutes late because he got the wrong room. There are remote people who are supposed to be joining the meeting, but nobody made it clear which tool they should use to jump in. When they finally join, there are some technical issues which take a few minutes to fix. You wait for a few more minutes for any other people who might be late, but nobody else joins in the end.
The facilitator starts explaining why this meeting is happening, and after 15 minutes of nothing, it’s getting clearer and clearer.
You didn’t have to be there. None of you had to be there. This could’ve been a Slack message, an email, or a hallway conversation.
Most people are on their laptops doing something else, and there are no real next steps or any outcome out of the meeting after 30 or (god forbid) 60 minutes.
If you are going through hell, keep going, they say…
Disclaimer
I’m writing this from the point of view of a Product Manager, a role which sometimes gets flak for facilitating a lot of meetings. And at times lots of meetings with lots of people.
The article is mainly focused on cases when there are more than two people in a meeting (or solving a problem), and it will most likely make the most sense to people who are working with remote teams. However, the best practices can be used anytime, anywhere.
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, read on!
What would’ve been better?
The story above is hopefully something that nobody has to sit through, ever, or at least not on a regular basis. It’s a one-off fluke that gets corrected right then and there.
But a meeting like that is not the thing that usually happens. Usually, one or two things out of that story are enough to make a meeting feel somewhat dreadful.
Maybe it was not really clear what the meeting was supposed to be about and what exactly should’ve been achieved by taking 30 minutes out of peoples day. Maybe it’s the first time everyone is hearing about the problem, and they need time to think it through first. Maybe people were not at the meeting enough and they didn’t pay attention. Maybe the equipment wasn’t working…
All meetings are not necessarily the devil. If done correctly, with at least some preparations on both sides and with respect for other peoples time in mind, meetings definitely have their space in the workplace and can be an effective way to resolve many problems. But for a huge portion of cases, there will be a more effective and productive way how you can solve things, and in a way where people will not have their morning or evening sliced into “before meeting” and “after meeting” times. This can result in people not being able to concentrate, not being able to get into the right state of mind for work that is necessary to code (or any other creative work), and making them generally less productive.
I believe that the reason why bad meetings happen is simple. With tools like Google Calendar, it’s just so extremely easy to do them nowadays. It’s low-effort. You click a few times, pick a few names and voila!
With great power (of inviting people to meetings), comes great responsibility (of only doing it when you can’t solve whatever you have to solve more effectively). And low-effort meetings are very ineffective.
What to do before inviting people for a meeting
Before you even start thinking about the word meeting, there’s plenty of things you can do.
- Share all information about the problem somewhere publicly beforehand (Slack), and start an async discussion with relevant stakeholders. They will join in when they have the time, and if something is complex enough and cannot be handled asynchronously or in a different way, they might even recommend a meeting themselves.
- Use a tool like Loom to prepare a quick (video) summary of the problem/project. What is the difference between speaking for 10 minutes at the beginning of a meeting and doing that same 10-minute speech in advance? Share it with the relevant people you would’ve invited to the meeting, and give them a way to see it and discuss it, when they have the time. Just last week I’ve decided to use this for a smaller project kick-off, and the feedback was positive. (I recommend you give Loom a shot)
Try to think outside of the meeting box
Even for certain situations when a meeting might be the first choice, like team meetings, or kick-off and sizing meetings for certain projects, there might be a better, less invasive alternative, or a way to make them more effective.
- Use Slack, Loom or another lool as mentioned above to provide an easily digestible summary.
- Provide a way for general discussions or in case something about the problem is unclear into a document which you share with all stakeholders. Dropbox Paper or Google Docs work great as you can assign actions to people, but any other collaboration tool will work.
- For team meetings:
- If taken seriously, standups on Slack work great and allow people to give their inputs when they feel comfortable to do so.
- Gather all information and notes from all members for other team activities (retrospectives, …) beforehand and engage in discussions in advance where applicable. If you do go with a meeting, it will make them extra quick and effective. Also, half of your meetings notes are now done before the meeting even started! - Don’t get me started on status meetings. Why would you need everyone in the same room at the same time to tell you how a project is going? Unless stakeholders agree that there is a blocker that needs to be discussed, JIRA, Slack, Loom, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs … you see the pattern here.
What to do when meetings actually have to happen?
When you’ve considered all your options and a meeting seems like the most effective way to deal with a problem, make sure that you make it as effective as possible, and that you appreciate the time of everyone you invite.
- Put all the information about why the meeting is happening into the summary of the meeting invitation: the agenda; summary of the problem; what should be the outcome of the meeting; links or other sources that could be useful before or during the meeting
- Provide a way for people to discuss the problem beforehand, in a collaboration tool or a shared document.
- Invite only the people who are necessary for the meeting, if you are not sure if someone should be invited, you can mark them as optional.
- Get in the meeting room before the meeting starts, and prepare all of the materials that could be referenced during it. Test the equipment in case you will be hosting people on a call. Avoid delays.
- Make sure that the people you are inviting don’t have any other meetings at that time, respect their time and their set blockers (or possible no-meetings-days), and try to schedule the meeting in advance (tomorrow morning does not give the people enough time to prepare)
- Always take meeting notes and write down actionable next steps with responsible people assigned to them. Set deadlines to encourage action, and follow-up in case of inaction. Share it with the attendees and anyone else who might be interested.
- Less is more. I am known for sometimes going a little bit overboard with my summaries, at times including more information than is necessary (I’m working on it). A huge block of text will most definitely get fewer responses and less engagement than 2–5 sentences. A 15-minute meeting will be better received than a 90-minute meeting. Prepare, and work on making all of the information easily understandable and digestible.
What to do before and after accepting an invitation for a meeting
Yes, you have responsibilities too! While I truly believe that if you have no idea what the meeting you were just invited to is about, you shouldn’t have to attend, it will most likely keep happening if no actions are taken.
- If there is no indication what the meeting is about, you could decline the invitation, let the inviter know why, and ask them to update the invitation with all the relevant information, or try and get them to engage in the topic in some other way. You are most likely not the only person who will have no idea what the meeting should be about, so you will be doing others a favor as well!
- If you know you won’t be able to make it to the meeting, decline in advance so that the inviter is aware.
- If the inviter did their due diligence and prepared information for you to digest beforehand, read it and engage in the topic before the actual meeting at a suitable time for you. There’s nothing worse for an inviter than knowing that even if they spent all that time for the preparations, nobody bothered to read anything.
- When you are at the meeting, be at the meeting! The sooner you can figure out the next steps regarding whatever you are meeting about, the sooner you can go back to doing uninterrupted work. Highly effective meetings are quick.
Takeaways
- Unnecessary or ineffective meetings can have devastating consequences on productivity, but meetings with a clear summary, agenda, and information provided beforehand are not the devil!
- Try out handling problems/projects for which you would’ve normally created a meeting in a way which doesn’t require everyone to be in the same room at the same time, and let me know the results!
- If a meeting has to happen, preparation from both parties is really important and should not be skipped. Preparation will make the meeting go smoother, and faster.
- Make sure you are on time, and if you are at the meeting, be at the meeting.
