How to run a meeting (1976) | Hacker News Reader

How to run a meeting (1976)

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147 pointstrendoid44 comments

My take: 0) invite the right people 1) send all relevant reading material 2 days before meeting 2) have an agenda for the meeting - in the invitation 3) agree who runs the meeting 4) follow the agenda, keep a log of issues that hijack the discussion but leave it at that and keep on with the subject 5) document decisions 6) send email with decisions/actions

Not that complex. I run meetings quite often, and they always work fine. Now workshops are a different think...

Yeah, I think "send all the relevant reading materials before hand" is great, and I'd add "and make sure everyone reads them" which is a cultural thing.

Another great one is to differentiate between items which are 'for decision' and those that are 'for discussion' - it sets expectations. If something is 'for decision' then the max-4-sides reading materials should cover all aspects (pros/cons) and it should be possible to make a decision from the materials.

If something is 'for discussion' then the meeting is going to contribute to the reading materials so there will be missing parts, or perhaps controversies that need to be hammered out in the meeting.

How does one "make sure everyone reads" the material? Issuing a pop quiz is popular amongst only school teachers.

Tufte says to set aside 1/3 of your meeting time to have everyone read the agenda and relevant information at the start.

Yes, that's what I meant by this this is a "cultural thing". In some organisations turning up to a meeting and not having done the pre-work would be unacceptable, in others it's not. It's something that the whole group has to buy into.

1.5) Inform everyone of the purpose of the meeting. Shall we come to a decision about something, produce some code, or align the goals for the project?

There are sections of this that overlap with how I treat meetings, but overall it seems like a bunch of verbal fluff that's the opposite of what a meeting should be. Exceedingly clear, short, and purposeful.

I learned a more pragmatic, even meeting-hostile approach to meetings: http://hackaday.com/2016/10/06/life-on-contract-how-to-have-...

The hackaday article is close, but not complete.

  1. The Problem, communicated in advance, understood by all parties
  2. The Exit Condition
  3. Time Boxed
  4. The Actionable tasks, when they will be done, who they are communicated to

When the exit condition is satisfied, the meeting is over. If the time allotted to the box goes over, the meeting is over. Once the exit condition is satisfied, tasks are allotted with clear timelines and points of contact. The meeting is run by _someone_, that person gets consensus when the exit criteria is met and is often the point of contact for the follow up tasks. The person running the meeting does research and communicates that research to the attendees. Any attendee not familiar with the research before the meeting starts is asked to leave. If it is determined that something is unknown and needs more research, those tasks are handed out and the meeting is reconvened at a later date. The meeting date is scheduled immediately.

This needs to be written up into a cheatsheet.

"Time Boxed" needs to mean boxed on both ends. If a meeting is scheduled to start at 2:00, it starts at 2:00. Not 2:05, not when the last person wanders in, and not when the organizer figures out how to run the projector. The implied task there is that any setup should be done prior to the start time.

Nothing is more frustrating than company cultures which allow the "meetings never start on time, so I'll show up late" / "not everyone is here on time so I'll wait a few more minutes" death spiral. It's like a game of chicken to see who thinks their time is more valuable than everyone else's.

This is a much more difficult problem at large companies where meeting rooms can be a scarce resource, and other meetings that run long can negatively impact yours.

Having a plan for the meeting and having everybody trying to keep the meeting short helps a lot. I think if you're in a place where you need to write ground rules for meeting there's a larger cultural problem that needs to be addressed.

I couldn't agree more. At my company, we have a few thousand employees spread across 2 main locations in the same city and 25 smaller offices. BUT we only have 12 full sized conference rooms and 4 that only seat 5. So we end up scheduling meetings more around conference room availability than person availability, and then we have people having to walk/bike/cab/uber a mile (or more) from another location to get to this meeting on time.

Scheduling meetings around employees (especially management), vendors and conference rooms is one of the biggest challenges we face for meeting times.

Try Sococo - virtual conference rooms. I swear, its better than everybody sitting in a physical room. You can see, hear, share docs, chat, form subgroups and regroup fluidly.

Caveat: I own stock (used to work there)

We have this through various other tools, but it will never kill off the need for face to face communications. Drawing on the white board, throwing markers at each other, two people presenting ideas at the same time.

This is especially difficult during technical integration meetings, where you are tossing around ideas left and right.

Sococo does all but the 'throwing markers' part.

Our meetings always start late but always end right on time. Either somebody rambles for half an hour to fill the time or the meeting closes in the middle of finding a solution.

There's little to no fluff in that article. ("Long" is not the same thing as "full of fluff".) He's simply analyzing a somewhat complex and very abstract topic -- how to run meetings in general. There are a lot of possible cases and exceptions that can come up in that structure, and he goes into detail about all of them.

Not every topic can be covered adequately in a pithy aphorism that fits into 140 characters or less. Attempting to jam such a complex topic as "running meetings" into a short format just for the sake of being short would not work. There are too many exceptions and contingencies. If they are ignored, the article would not be not a useful guide to "meetings" in general.

That sounds like a lot of verbal fluff. I learned a more pragmatic, even posting-hostile approach to posting:

1. Post message

2. Get upvotes

Not billing for meeting time? Amateur :P

How meetings are run:

1) Wait 5 to 10 minutes for everyone to join

2) Spend additional 5 minutes getting your computer hooked into the projector and shared with remote participants

3) Read through your powerpoint

4) Ask for feedback. Receive comments about your choice of font for the powerpoint.

5) Thank everyone for the meeting and head to the next one.

> Receive comments about your choice of font for the powerpoint.

That would be 2.5, they will be unsolicited, and yes, your font really is too small.

2.6 is where you spend another five minutes faffing about with the font size until everyone is happy.

(which is why I rarely use slides and even more rarely put any text in them)

(but if you're demoing anything on a computer screen, the same applies)

You also forgot to label your axes and you have to discuss the points that were decided on last time, but not everyone agreed with!

This is helpful for me. I serve on a local board and this very much describes the type of discourse that occurs there. For reference, we run the meetings according to Bourinot's rules of order: https://www.amazon.com/Bourinots-Rules-Order-Assemblies-Shar...

By the same token, this is not terrible useful for me in terms of work meetings which are extremely informal in comparison. They are also intended to achieve a different goal.

I'd say that both types of meetings are appropriate for their goals, but I've also been surprised at just how effective the more formal meetings have been in achieving progress and consensus.

I avoid meetings like the plague. Even when I was running a company with 80 people I would ask if I was necessary or my input was necessary. If not I wouldn't accept.

Meetings are like teamwork trips. They are the illusion of progress.

There are situations where they are necessary but nothing beat ongoing discussions around actual work.

Did you read the full article? Meetings are where a group comes together and adds to its knowledge as a group. Nowadays we have things like IRC, which lets us do a lot remotely, but there's nothing like sitting in a room with other people to examine an issue.

Poorly-run meetings give the illusion of progress, but I posit that well-run meetings are actually a good thing. They shouldn't be gab-fests; they should be intentional, with reasons for existing and with some sort of output (e.g. 'the design for the new subsystem' or 'the team will understand and be prepared to address the causes for our failure to ship').

Yes i did and i dont agree with that description of meetings in reality. Nothing beats working side by side, but meetings is not working side by side its mostly talking about things which could be communicated in a mail.

I've always thought that the most valuable thing I taught my reports was to not accept meeting invitations by default.

Ask: 1) What's the agenda?

2) I don't see why I need to be there. Do you really need me?

3) If there isn't a solid YES to (2), then answer "I'll keep that time open. Call me if something comes up that needs my input."

It's amazing how many unnecessary people are invited to meetings under the guise of "he may be interested/have input."

Respect people's time and don't waste it!

Teamwork exercises actually do work to gel a new team, despite everyone rolling their eyes!

Not if the team aren't already good at teamwork in my experience.

Just a couple of days ago I was thinking about this topic exactly.

Considering that I spend upwards of 2 hours per day in meetings it is amazing how little time I have dedicated into thinking about how to make meetings more efficient. I don't think I'm the only one to make this mistake. Just because you have 5 people sitting in a room talking does not mean we are going anywhere or we are making any decisions.

Does anybody have a book recommendation where I can read more about how to maximize productivity of meetings?

Wow, what an obnoxious page header. It takes up a quarter of the screen on my laptop!

And, it makes it yet another web site where page-down fails to go one page down.

There was an old book on the topic. Roberts Rules of Order

i don't think it's old as in not referenced anymore - i seem to recall the US Senate uses it as their rule book? or Heinlein sent me wrong...

Old as in "published in 1876". It's still widely used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_authority

And in the UK there is Citrines ABC of Chairmanship which plays a similar role.

Unfortunetly both the UK and the USA executives "get up to naughty shit" as a MP (EX Whip and a candidate for the speaker ) said to me once in the bar at conference :-)

It'd be hilarious if one of my co-workers tried to break out the ole Roberts Rules at a typical meeting.... Meetings are bad enough.

That's the thing — the rules of order are intended to make meetings function smoothly, even when the attendees hate one another.

And the rules themselves anticipate that not every meeting needs to use every rule. The basic ideas are good ones (e.g. record minutes of the meeting or the chairman should run the meeting but not take sides).

Maybe he should you need a chair who will to take a stand and enforce the rules.

A related classic take on how to run meetings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46BFYo4drLc

-9) Keep everyone productive and focused... scarcity = prioritization

-8) Eliminate boat anchors wasting time of previous with non-value-add bullshit.

Off topic, but I'm so glad that writing has gotten more concise over the last 40 years.

interesting that this is from 1976 and still applies to 2016, but does it apply to startup companies?

here are my takes on meetings in general, some correlated to the article's sentiments:

1. avoid meetings when possible, avoid them like the plague. as a meeting organizer, you need to be very clear about your objective/goal for the meeting, so don't be too liberal with other people's time, but this also means when being asked to attend a meeting, cancelling or rejecting the ones you deem to be useless. learn to just say "no". as an engineer i feel this sometimes lowers your favorability in the eyes of managers or peers, but this sets the right culture and tone, if you're in a company where you attend a lot of useless meetings, i feel for you.

2. avoid meetings when possible

3. avoid meetings when possible

4. for decision making meetings, limit the number, preferably <= 3, the more people you add, the more opinions you have to filter which sets things back. lots of my key decisions are done in private with one person. ever go into that meeting with 11 people in the room, all ready to say something for the sake of saying something? run, run as fast as you can!

5. always list actions triggered from the meeting and follow up on them adamantly with owners assigned before leaving the room. the meetings where there's a lot of talk, but then everyone leaves without clear ownership are a waste of time.

6. for developers, it's important to recognize that they maybe in "the zone", so if i must have a meeting with developers, i try to organize this during the beginning or end of the day, meetings during the middle of day tend to break them out of the zone, then they have to context switch back to that deep problem that they were thinking about which would be a huge productivity fail on everyone's part.

7. keep things concise, we're not here to small talk about families or the warriors, do that at the water cooler. some people use this as an ice breaker to relax the mood, but that is just potentially a cover up for some big shit storm about to happen.

8. for the meetings where you're trying to pass down information, keep it concise again, ok to reiterate key messaging, believe the shit that you're saying, have conviction.

9. keep track of time, i hate all the assholes that overrun meeting times, i tend to attend these meetings less and less, if they can't prove that they can hold effective meetings then you lose my time.

10. know thy audience, what messaging do you want to give, what messaging do you hope they digest, and tailor it, don't talk about stuff that 80% of the people don't care about, you're wasting people's time.

11. the good ol' status meeting, everyone and their mother attends to get a feel for what others are working on, but has absolutely no pertinence to what i need to get done or have done. really keep things high level, this is not your chance to voice your opinion, or give people the illusion that you're busy. just talk about the high level points, if you have stuff to resolve, don't do it in the meeting, do it offline, ahead of the meeting.

12. prepare well for meetings, i used to think that i could just waltz in and improvise, no, you need to prepare well, if you have a 1h meeting with 5 people, that's 6h of company time being spent, almost a full person day spent. you better be ready and you better get to the point.

13. be on time, every minute wasted is amplified by the number of people waiting. i usually issue punishment for the ones that come in late, sometimes just the latest, sometimes everyone who's late, buy coffee, do pushups, whatever it is.

14. i have a no phone and laptop policy in my meetings, sure you could be one of those new fangled flower power children that like to take notes on ipad/surface, or evernote on your laptop, but don't do that. you should, however, bring in a paper notebook. i know you have photographic memory, but bring that notebook, means you're well prepared and expecting something out of the meeting. i had a friend that brought his laptop to play nba live to his harvard law school class. i also had this senior director during a 3 on 1 interview doodle penises on his laptop while the candidate was talking. there's potential for a lot of mistrust in these circumstances. i think for the meeting owner to project onto a screen is obviously fine, but there's nothing concealed. assholes that answer phone calls or email during my meetings, unless you're sre/devops, should be banned from meetings. the goal should be to get out of the meeting as quickly as possible, everyone focused, if you cannot focus then things will drag on.

15. avoid meetings if possible...

'an all-electronic, multichannel, microwave, fiber-optic video display dream console in his living room' ..phroar!

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