Ask HN: How are you dealing with meetings and meeting creep? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How are you dealing with meetings and meeting creep?

27 pointsluka-birsa12 comments

I know that a lot of us are frustrated with the quality of meetings - some analysis show that this is true for 53% of workforce. I'm researching what problems people run into and how they address them, as I'm thinking about a new product we could launch.

I've seen various approaches (checklists, apps for meeting management, books, coaching), but I'd love to hear what do you think about your companies meeting culture and what are you doing to improve meetings. It's OK if you come clean and say you simply hate meetings and want them to burn in eternal flame.

I've prepared a short (8 question + demographics) survey [1], but feel free to add comments directly in this thread. If you're interested in results add a comment, and I'll send you the results.

[1] https://forms.gle/RVDHFVE1fvoFUXX57

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1/ Don't attend meetings that have no or vague agenda 2/ Law of two feet: If you feel the meeting isn't for you, leave. 3/ No developer should endure recurring meetings (except for things like scrum ceremony or whatever methodology you practice requires), that's for management.

I'm a manager now, so I can get away with pushing back on some things. I always push back against a new recurring meeting, when I can. Recurring meetings are almost universally unnecessary.

I started scheduling any meeting I ran for 25 minutes instead of the expected and default 60.

I told everyone at the start of each meeting that I aimed to finish in 20 mins and 5 mins was a buffer.

This leads to relentless

- don't discuss anything that is not relevant to every single person in the room

- limit the amount of "brainstorming" etc

I'm still not 100% sure that I'm not skipping Important Things somehow (especially when I see marketing have 3-4 hour long "syncs" with different sub-groups in a row, but I feel like we get enough done, often in as little as 10 mins.

Next step - persuade the others to give it a go.

The one thing that really makes a difference for me is having an agenda for the meeting a few days or week ahead of time. This allows me to really reflect on what part of the meeting is important to me and how I can best contribute.

If you get an agenda same day and everyone is super busy, the meeting tends to be unfocused and a real waist of time.

Meeting length is another important factor. An ideal meeting is 15 minutes and should not exceed 30 minutes. Anything longer causes fatigue.

One other thing I think is important is to really have one person drive the agenda. If two people start getting into a detailed discussion, and these details have no bearing on the rest of the attendees, the person driving the discussion should step in and ask them to take it up outside the meeting.

Go to relevant meetings and participate productively. When people need lots of meetings that is a signal that they need information, and if they need information perhaps consider thinking about how they would get said information.

As a manager, when people make it difficult to communicate with them, I eventually draw a negative inference about whatever they are (not) doing.

The only thing that wastes more time than meetings is complaining about meetings.

A few things I've found helpful: - always have a detailed agenda well ahead of time so participants can prepare accordingly - there should be a specific outcome for the meeting, and the meeting can end once that's been achieved - there should be an owner of the meeting that holds the focus, and prevents it from getting derailed - default meetings to shorter than longer.

I'm wondering this too, our company has relatively small and has done a great job at reducing meetings for engineers. But peeking at any other department calendars shows significant meeting creep with weekly syncs that seem important. Arguably some of their jobs (eng manager) inevitably has tons of meetings but as we grow I only see more and more meetings accumulating.

As a manager I am in meetings for 4 hours a day. I bring my laptop and continue to work. It is actually very productive!

Shouldn't you just stop going?

I have to participate, it is part of my my responsibilities. However I am able to listen to the meeting, provide feedback and work on my laptop at the same time

I just don't participate in meetings that I know are useless from previous time it was held.

so just ask michael&noah https://mobile.twitter.com/asknoahshow/status/11107491891919... #asknoahapp

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