• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

  • @dalmaer
  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Meetings with too many people suck

September 8, 2014 Leave a Comment


Have too many people in a meeting and it sucks. Everyone knows this!

The problem is that the reverse is often worse. Not having enough people in the meetings. Why? You end up with a cascade of a ton of meetings.

If you have people in a meeting you are taking them away from something else they can be doing. If you have this noble realization you are paranoid about the number of folks that you invite to a meeting. You don’t want to waste anyones time.

The perfect meeting has the smallest number of people who can make the right decision and disseminate the outcomes to the people that need to know of them.

Well, wait a minute, are all meetings equal?

No. There are actually different types of meetings, with different styles and goals. Is the meeting to get info across to a set of people? Are you looking to have a “working meeting” (hilarious term) to actually tackle a problem?

Flippin’ Aye

We have all been in those meetings where you wonder “why am I here? couldn’t this info be sent in an email?” These are painful and a huge waste of time for a team. They normally fall into the “lecture” format, having someone up front telling you some information. This isn’t engaging, and you sitting there doesn’t add value.

Don’t these sometimes remind you of lectures at school? Weren’t those classes painful too? Yes. Fortunately, we are starting to see some changes to the way that we teach, such as flip teaching.

Instead of having a professor lecture a large number of seated students (as they maybe try to stay awake), instead the resources (which could even be a recording of the lecture) are available before hand. The students are expected to have gone through the information, and then the classroom time is spent with engaging conversation. Don’t just take the info as rote truth, argue! What don’t you understand? Maybe you can go through some problems together? Much more engaging and practical.

Imagine if your next all hands was handled that way? Instead of some execs getting up on stage, what if you had been given a handout and could then come in and ask questions? Make the time worth while?

If you can’t? Don’t have the meeting.

Solving the problem with the right problem solvers

When you have the “too small” meetings, you are really seeing that the right problem solvers for the situation aren’t in the room. Meeting One ends up with one conclusion, but that decision gets messaged down the chain and someone with good information points out how that can’t actually work. You now end up bouncing around as sub-meetings are created to gather more info and you get into a cycle that ends up with a huge number of meetings.

The original person had their heart in the right place but inadvertently created a cascading storm. Whoops.

Capturing Decisions

I have been trying to capture decisions along with the data that was the basis of said decisions. I have found that over time a team can second guess, or come around to the same questions again and again. Revisiting something isn’t all bad, as the context and data may have changed, but having an audit trail enables me to tighten the cycle “anything changed? nope… ok can move on!”

Slacking off

It has been fun to see more teams use tools such as Slack to jump into vs. F2F meetings or email. There is a place for the different tools, but we seem to be getting a little better at choosing the right tool for the job.

This is critical as I really want to have people more able to focus on productive work vs. wasteful meetings. This doesn’t mean that meetings are all bad, as it is critical to have a shared consciousness in your team.

The cost of creating a meeting request in your calendar app doesn’t quite map to the potential productivity cost, so if you aren’t vigilant your time is taken from you.

The battle for balance continues.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Twitter

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Generative AI: It’s Time to Get Into First Gear
  • Developer Docs + GenAI = ❤️
  • We keep confusing efficacy for effectiveness
  • The holy grail of a Web SDK
  • The rise of the extensible app platforms

Follow

  • LinkedIn
  • Medium
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Tags

3d Touch 2016 Active Recall Adaptive Design Agile Amazon Echo Android Android Development Apple Application Apps Artificial Intelligence Autocorrect blog Bots Brain Calendar Career Advice Cloud Computing Coding Cognitive Bias Commerce Communication Companies Conference Consciousness Cooking Cricket Cross Platform Deadline Delivery Design Desktop Developer Advocacy Developer Experience Developer Platform Developer Productivity Developer Relations Developers Developer Tools Development Distributed Teams Documentation DX Ecosystem Education Energy Engineering Engineering Mangement Entrepreneurship Exercise Family Fitness Founders Future GenAI Gender Equality Google Google Developer Google IO Habits Health HR JavaScript Jobs Jquery Kids Stories Kotlin Language Leadership Learning Lottery Machine Learning Management Messaging Metrics Micro Learning Microservices Microsoft Mobile Mobile App Development Mobile Apps Mobile Web Moving On NPM Open Source Organization Organization Design Pair Programming Paren Parenting Path Performance Platform Platform Thinking Politics Product Design Product Development Productivity Product Management Product Metrics Programming Progress Progressive Enhancement Progressive Web App Project Management Psychology Push Notifications pwa QA Rails React Reactive Remix Remote Working Resilience Ruby on Rails Screentime Self Improvement Service Worker Sharing Economy Shipping Shopify Short Story Silicon Valley Slack Software Software Development Spaced Repetition Speaking Startup Steve Jobs Study Teaching Team Building Tech Tech Ecosystems Technical Writing Technology Tools Transportation TV Series Twitter Typescript Uber UI Unknown User Experience User Testing UX vitals Voice Walmart Web Web Components Web Development Web Extensions Web Frameworks Web Performance Web Platform WWDC Yarn

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • January 2023
  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012

Search

Subscribe

RSS feed RSS - Posts

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.

Dion Almaer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in