[HN Gopher] How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)
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How do we make remote meetings not suck? (2018)
Author : kuahyeow
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-07-14 00:52 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chelseatroy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chelseatroy.com)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| stop having them and rely largely on email for communications
| that should in fact be email.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Okay, this may sound nuts but I think the only issue with your
| proposal is that it doesn't address the reason that this
| doesn't happen. Our colleagues do not or do not want to read
| business communications for the purpose of comprehension for
| the content of their own work or communication with their
| colleagues.
|
| I genuinely propose a three strike policy where professional
| employees are to be fired after three occasions where they
| demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to read and
| comprehend important business communications less than two
| pages or 6 paraphrases in length. This includes emails and
| internal publications, but not async communication on platforms
| like Slack, Teams, or non-recorded verbal meetings (digital or
| otherwise), nor does it include verbal conversations with
| colleagues in person or otherwise.
|
| I freely admit to wanting a business environment where email
| communication and content is considered sacred in commercial
| contexts. Where it's unacceptable to not only be familiar with
| but understand well the contents of an email that is now the
| subject of a meeting or otherwise directly important the
| content of one's work.
|
| I've tried to right this "meeting should be an email" battle
| but the reality is shocking: _nobody reads anything_ , for the
| most part, and when they do, they act like they didn't.
|
| Reading compression is a faux pa, better to get the
| accreditation that comes from an in person discussion.
|
| This is the sort of rant that I'm sure I've run afoul of as
| well. But I stand by it regardless. The reason that we have
| meetings instead of emails is incredible simple: people do not
| read and comprehend emails.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| > "This includes emails... but not async communication."
|
| Your failure to communicate clearly here is one of the most
| ironic and (presumably unintentionally) hilarious things I've
| read in some time.
| crngefest wrote:
| I ran into the same issue but I'm curious
|
| >people do not read and comprehend emails.
|
| Why do you think that is the case? It seems like a simple
| thing to do
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Too much email spam from the company, including fake phishing
| attempts, to take my inbox seriously. It's a noisy channel.
|
| Email is also slow. Instant messaging is where it's at, but
| most people's reading comprehension and writing are not at
| the level where that's the only viable medium.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Depends entirely on the context. There are plenty of cases
| where email, _especially_ when it comes to taking the time
| to sort out your thoughts and then format them nicely, is
| better than instance messaging.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I've tried to right this "meeting should be an email"
| battle but the reality is shocking: nobody reads anything,
| for the most part, and when they do, they act like they
| didn't.
|
| Exactly. "This meeting could have been an E-mail" is only
| true if people read and respond to their E-mail. I usually
| will try E-mail first, but if I don't get a response or if
| the expected action is not taken--I sigh and break out the
| meeting invite.
| jaggederest wrote:
| > _nobody reads anything,_ for the most part, and when they
| do, they act like they didn't.
|
| It's actually even more insidious than a lack of reading
| comprehension.
|
| It's a lack of retention in memory. People read an email, it
| blends in with all the other email they read, it lacks
| salience, it's the metaphorical "in one ear, out the other".
| Text lacks immediacy so it doesn't get attention, retention,
| or action.
|
| This is, needless to say, not a solvable problem within any
| given team, company, or industry.
|
| Edit: The irony of writing this in a HN comment does not
| elude me.
| arp242 wrote:
| People not reading emails hasn't really been a problem pretty
| much anywhere I worked for the last 10 years or more. People
| not writing them _has_ been a problem though. Maybe this was
| caused by people not reading them, but I 've always suspected
| that a lot of people just don't like writing, and/or aren't
| very good at it. So it's easier for them to do an in-person
| meeting.
|
| And when no or very few emails get sent, no on really pays
| attention to them. I haven't even opened the company email in
| a week because there is never anything interesting there.
|
| I really wish writing would be emphasized more in job
| interviews. I have seen some that emphasise written
| communication, but it's relatively rare.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Maybe this was caused by people not reading them, but
| I've always suspected that a lot of people just don't like
| writing, and/or aren't very good at it.
|
| Writing an email tends is harder than having a meeting,
| because you (generally) need to understand the problem to
| talk about it. This is true of both providing information
| about the problem and for asking questions about it. Part
| of writing about something is taking the time to understand
| it.
|
| It can easily take me 20-30 minutes to write an email about
| something. But, especially in the case of asking for more
| information about something, it _also_ results in me having
| a clearer understanding of the topic; because I needed to
| identify what questions to ask. However, me spending 30
| minutes on writing that email means
|
| - I understand the problem better (as noted), AND
|
| - Multiple _other_ people don't spend 15 minutes in a
| meeting while I solidify my understanding enough to ask the
| right questions. And that saves a lot more time overall.
|
| That being said, sometimes meetings are the right answer,
| because there's a gap somewhere and people just don't know
| what questions to ask; they need to get together and just
| talk about it.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I feel like unrelated issues are being conflated here? The
| issue of one on one interpersonal communication should be a
| solved problem given email, text, phone, video call (one on
| one video calls don't suffer the same flavor of hideousness
| inflicted when the headcount starts to grow).
|
| By comparison large headcount meetings are gross sadistic and
| pointless in person regardless of communications format
| selected. Either they're intended to let a small number of
| individuals convey information to a larger group (send a
| goddamn email already, if you're really fancy video your
| canned remarks and send a link to the video in the email), or
| they're intended to elicit some kind of exchange among a
| large group, at which point you end up with an hour and a
| half of nothing of substance being accomplished while
| some/most/all of the meeting participants are sitting there
| fighting their soul's urge to simply vacate their body on the
| spot. Then there's the ever-popular multi-departmental
| standup meeting, in which a bunch of people convey pointless
| detail at length about shit that is wildly irrelevant to the
| jobs of most of the other attendees to no obvious purpose.
|
| Full Disclosure: I intentionally ignore my email under the
| assumption that if it's really important someone will pick up
| a phone and call.
| nlawalker wrote:
| For people who are good readers and writers of email, there's a
| winning strategy that gives everyone what they want.
|
| On the receiving side: _information-delivery presentations are
| async communications_ , it's just that historical precedent
| demands that everyone get a calendar invite to the live taping.
| Not everyone wants to write and send email, and with the
| options for consuming recorded content now, that's fine. You
| can read their slides, watch their presentation at 2x, fly
| through the transcript, read the AI summary, etc. on your own
| time.
|
| On the sending side: next time you write a really great email,
| don't send it. Send a meeting invite so people can watch live
| while you record yourself _reading it to the camera_ while
| displaying slides with a bullet-point summary you can have
| ChatGPT generate for you. Get good at it and you 'll quickly
| get a reputation for being a great communicator - people will
| genuinely be impressed at how prepared you are and how clear
| your thinking is.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Every meeting starts with an agenda and ends with minutes or
| don't bother showing up
|
| Or admit that their de facto purpose is to socialize on company
| time, which is something that should be done but is hard to
| quantify
| stavros wrote:
| This article keeps talking about "the caucus problem", but never
| actually defines it. I couldn't follow the post at all because
| every problem kept ending with "but this isn't the real problem,
| the caucus problem is".
| crngefest wrote:
| Same.
|
| I searched a bit online but it doesn't seem to be a well
| established term
| goldfishgold wrote:
| A caucus is defined and discussed in the previous post: "A
| caucus (and specifically an unmoderated caucus) is a type of
| meeting with no rules about who talks in what order or for how
| long."
|
| Agreed the post is confusing and could have used a summary of
| the preceding piece to be intelligible.
|
| https://chelseatroy.com/2018/03/29/why-do-remote-meetings-su...
| stavros wrote:
| That clarifies things, thank you!
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| For everyone else who felt similarly, the explanation is in the
| previous post (linked near the top of the intro). I also found
| this confusing because the whole intro felt like it was
| building up to define the concept and explain why it's a (the)
| problem. I even googled the term, thinking it may be some term
| of art I'm just not familiar with. Then I looked back at the
| intro again, and inferred that it must be pointing back into
| the post series... just conveying that poorly.
| sublinear wrote:
| > So the thing is, human social relationships demand structure.
|
| This is the part I agree with the most. I'm not sure about the
| rest.
|
| I can only speak from the perspective of a software engineer.
| Many meetings, especially daily standups, do not prioritize and
| filter out user stories and tasks causing them to take way too
| long. People zone out making the meetings less effective. It's
| basically weaponized on some projects especially when the
| management doesn't have a clue what's going on. It enables the
| blame game e.g. "well why didn't you say something during the
| meeting?"
|
| It's usually pretty clear what should be discussed, but it's rare
| to see a project manager who looks at the activity stream on Jira
| or equivalent. There's usually a huge disconnect between
| management and dev teams in general, even on a relatively "well
| run" project where everything goes as planned with minimal
| friction. Devs wind up picking up a lot of slack and just have
| their own informal meetings amongst themselves to remedy it.
|
| This is terrible long term. Every project I've ever been on
| inevitably hits a snag and all this unravels into management
| going into freak out mode when they realize how big these
| communication gaps have become.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Make them shorter and more focused.
| wvenable wrote:
| In our organization, remote meetings don't suck. It more or less
| just happened organically because we are a fairly flat
| organization but in a traditional industry.
|
| Mostly no cameras. I don't even own a webcam.
|
| A meeting is called for a reason (even if it's recurring). We
| have no "this is the morning meeting" kind of meetings.
|
| There a single person in charge of the meeting. This is most
| often the person who wants to get resolved the thing the meeting
| is about. This isn't enforced it's just a natural consequence of
| someone booking a meeting.
|
| Most meetings are between 2-5 people. Large recurring meetings
| are maybe max 12-15 people. In the large meeting, there is a
| rough agenda and everyone speaks to their part of the agenda in
| turn. Anyone can speak up if they have something relevant to add
| but otherwise they are muted. This is usually when I get my
| laundry folded.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Very close to my own rules for meetings.
|
| - Meetings must have a purpose. (to echo you above)
|
| - The meeting must have a result, some sort of action or next
| step. Only one.
|
| - When the meeting has created a result to address the purpose,
| the meeting is over.
|
| - Someone runs the meeting. They decide when the result has
| been achieved. (to echo you above)
|
| - Someone (explicitly not the meeting runner) takes notes,
| action items, etc, and records the purpose and result.
|
| - The rule is, you invite people who are required to achieve
| the result. Other people, marked as optional, may attend if
| they feel they are necessary. Otherwise, optional attendance
| defaults to not attending.
|
| - No recurring meetings, no "informational updates", those we
| call something else. A hangout. A discussion. A presentation.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Typically I leave my camera off during meetings. (Well, the
| boring ones anyway.)
|
| Which means I just keep on working during the meeting listening
| with half an ear.
|
| This is especially applicable to reoccurring meetings where the
| manager is talking to the team, getting progress reports,
| working through the jira list and so on.
|
| This actually makes for a really productive meeting. I can fill
| the dead time with admin tasks, but I'm also somewhat aware of
| what else is happening. Last month it became clear one team
| member was struggling (for days) trying to do something outside
| their experience. I offered to make an example, and got him
| onto the right track.
|
| It's taken a long time to get used to these regular progress
| meetings (and I imagine pre-covid they were done in person and
| insanely frustrating) but now I gave the rhythm of them I just
| keep working.
|
| One tip I noticed, if Roger should comment on what I'm about to
| say then say "hey roger" at the start of the piece not " what
| do you think roger" at the end. :)
| r00fus wrote:
| > One tip I noticed, if Roger should comment on what I'm
| about to say then say "hey roger" at the start of the piece
| not " what do you think roger" at the end. :)
|
| I do this without thinking. I even add some fluff or delay
| between the "hey roger" so that Roger has time to context-
| switch before I ask the question because you know everyone is
| multitasking during these meetings.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Which means I just keep on working during the meeting
| listening with half an ear.
|
| I think this might be WHY remote meetings work so well when
| they work.
|
| They aren't meetings like a board room meeting. They are like
| sitting in a room with colleagues and occasionally
| communicating.
|
| If everyone has to pay attention, the meeting had better be
| worth n x salary x hours.
|
| If you can sort of be there and sort of not, it costs very
| little.
| rurp wrote:
| > Mostly no cameras.
|
| It's interesting to hear this from others. Years ago I would
| have expected that camera-on meetings would be more productive
| on average, but my own experience is the opposite. I have only
| worked at a few remote companies but the places where cameras
| mostly weren't used had far far less wasted meeting time.
| notnaut wrote:
| David Foster Wallace was clever in his forethought here,
| though the reasons video calls have largely fallen out of
| favor in the real world may be different.
|
| "Within like 16 months or 5 sales quarters, the tumescent
| demand curve collapsed like a kicked tent, so that by the
| Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, fewer than 10 percent
| of all private telephone communications utilized any video
| image fiber data transfers ... the average US phone user
| deciding that s/he actually preferred the retrograde old low-
| tech Bell-era voice-only phone interface after all. ...
| Audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that
| the person on the other end was paying complete attention to
| you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything
| even close to complete attention to her ... video telephony
| rendered the fantasy insupportable."
| throw_that_away wrote:
| hint: It's the company that sucks not the meeting :/
| goldfishgold wrote:
| (2018)
| agentultra wrote:
| > if the goal is instead to deliver info to the attendees, your
| meeting should be an email
|
| If we just stuck to this rule I would have hours of more time to
| do actual work.
|
| So many "meetings," are listening to folks um-and-ah their way
| through their slides. They read the exact text they wrote.
| Slowly. It's painful.
|
| Just send an email.
|
| If this happens in recurring meetings, make an email digest.
| cpeterso wrote:
| The flip side of "this meeting should have been an email" is
| that people need to read their email. I think Slack, always on
| and always interrupting, has eroded thoughtful email habits.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| As I grow older, and perhaps comfortable in my skin/being
| fired/whatever, I will actually just ask for the document to be
| shared before leaving the meeting in these cases
| cyrnel wrote:
| I appreciate the attempt to bring structure to meetings. I agree
| structure is necessary, but I feel like the article is committing
| the same sin that it decries: "rewarding A but hoping for B"
|
| If you blindly rebalance meetings based on "caucus score", you'll
| get less ideas from the loud people and more ideas from the quiet
| people ("A"). You won't necessarily get better ideas overall
| ("B").
|
| IMO, the "floor" should be given primarily to people with a track
| record of clearly and concisely expressing novel and good ideas,
| no matter how loud or quiet those people are. Figuring out who
| those people are is hard and probably can't be nicely described
| in a blog post.
|
| No one has a meaningful contribution for every topic, and most
| people don't have the self-awareness to know whether their
| contribution is meaningful or not. Any good meeting structure has
| to be able to handle that common situation in a safe and healthy
| way.
| smelendez wrote:
| The main issue that this gets at is that meeting time is a
| valuable company resource and a contentious resource for
| employees and should be managed as such.
|
| People shouldn't feel free to chime in with half-baked ideas in
| meetings or call meetings willy-nilly any more than they would
| play horseshoes with equipment from the supply closet, use the
| company credit card for grocery shopping, or call in sick to play
| golf.
|
| What appropriate policies look like probably do vary by company
| and team but the policy shouldn't just be that anyone with access
| to the calendar software can call a meeting or that anyone in the
| meeting can speak at any time.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think I agree. And this may be why there is so much variance.
| What worked with one team, vendor, group, might not work well
| with another. I am just about end a very unpleasant project
| about to go-live and has been something of a shitshow from the
| beginning. The one recurring theme throughout that we had no
| one person in charge, who could (edit: nicer phrasing ) help
| guide the conversation. Post-mortem will not be fun for anyone.
|
| The lack of structure can be a benefit; it can work, but not
| when the project requires close coordination. On the other
| hand, stupid policies can easily hamstring PMs.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > call in sick to play golf
|
| If someone really doesn't want to work, I think from the
| employer's perspective it doesn't make a difference. We could
| argue physical and mental inconveniences could be seen the
| same. I guess there will be places were there's a legal split
| between the two kinds, but I kinda wish there wasn't.
|
| (I'm assuming there's a finite number of days either way)
| skywhopper wrote:
| Latency is the killer for me. Both with video calls and even just
| with cell phone calls. Old school phone calls could be
| spontaneous and collaborative almost as good as meeting in
| person, because latency was as close to zero as possible and you
| could properly hear both people talking at the same time. But the
| delays and lack of good audio mixing in cell and video-call tech
| mean it's impossible to use in the same way. Given the
| fundamental differences, then, the better solution is to use
| video calls only for highly structured meetings and to use other
| tools like chat and email (gasp) for remote collaboration.
| stavros wrote:
| VoIP phones have excellent latency nowadays, much better than a
| call. It's possible to have a normal conversation on them.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's not much the phone but the network. How many insist
| using craptops with crappy softphone webapps connected via
| crappy wifi because they think a damn desktop with a normal
| cat6 to the router is "an old thing"? How many even try to
| attend certain meetings on the go on crappy mobile macrobugs
| AKA smartphones on mobile networks?
| dbalatero wrote:
| I think a laptop with cat6 would be sufficient.
| dhosek wrote:
| It seems to me that the problem isn't that remote meetings suck
| but that meetings suck. My writing group meets remotely because
| (a) covid and (2) one of the members moved to Ohio from Chicago.
| We manage not to have the issues about people interrupting etc.,
| likely because we (a) care about what we're doing and (2)
| actually that caring about what we're doing really covers it. We
| do have structure in that we're workshopping 2-3 stories per
| session and we have a four-part agenda for each story (aboutness,
| likes, suggestions, questions). Everybody has done the necessary
| homework before the meeting (in this case read the stories and
| written up their notes), but the structure means that we avoid a
| common workshop trap of everybody just reading their notes to the
| group and since you know your notes will go to the writer, you
| don't need to feel obligated to say everything you've written
| down.
|
| Thinking about this, I can see pretty clearly how this could be
| translated into work meetings pretty easily and fits with a lot
| of the other commentary here.
|
| But bottom line, either the meetings will suck or they won't and
| what matters is not whether they're in-person or remote but how
| they're run.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| > ... (a) covid and (2) one ...
|
| > ... because we (a) ... and (2) actually
|
| Why are you (consistently) follow "(a)" with "(2)"? Is this an
| AI thing?
| tired-turtle wrote:
| I suspect to emphasize enumeration so readers don't
| incorrectly parse the sentence. But the text would be even
| clearer had these speech patterns been omitted altogether.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I'm way more irked by (2) following (a). It's (a), (b),
| (c), or (1), (2), (3), or (a), (b), (v), but for chrissake,
| don't mix the styles.
| dhosek wrote:
| Hey, keep complaining and I'll give you (iii), (Si ),
| (5), (6), (7), (8) and ().
| refulgentis wrote:
| Not in this thread yet, not talking down to you,
| apologies if tone comes across that way: jokes aside,
| noticed you're OP, and I'm very curious what the intent
| was here.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I think it's a quirky thing
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2018)
|
| Related from earlier:
|
| _Why do remote meetings suck so much?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953914
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The closer meetings are to a conversation with a couple people,
| the better. No one likes the one presenting to twenty slog. That
| sort of meeting always could have been an email because there
| isn't enough time for everyone to have meaningful back and forth
| conversation or give good feedback.
| anotheryou wrote:
| purely technical, but lower latency (even at the cost of
| crackles), make everyone have a good mic, emulated spacial audio.
|
| I think these things would help so so much. I wonder if there is
| any research on the impact of these.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Emphatically agreed.
|
| I'm sure there are some research results on how high-quality
| audio improves meetings - or conversely, how degraded audio
| degrades communications.
|
| Those research results might not be trivially easy to find
| however. And I'm sure there's been less of this kind of
| research than we'd like.
|
| However! I'm fairly sure that a pretty convincing picture can
| be assembled through looking at things from different fields of
| study.
|
| As far as I know, the brain processes any incoming signals.
| There's all sorts of filtering going on to extract the
| meaningful signal. I'm fairly certain that degraded input costs
| much more brain processing than clear input, probably
| measurable by MRI or fatigue tests or calorie consumption, if
| not directly by performance testing on accuracy or response
| time.
|
| I'm also curious if the field that studies turn-taking in human
| speech communications doesn't have something to say about
| unnatural latency between speakers. Cognitive efficiency and
| communications efficiency are surely measurable there.
| Psychoacoustic neuropsychology? idk.
|
| And then I wonder if the entertainment market hasn't done some
| research on high-quality reproduction in, say, cinemas? Almost
| certainly the investment into elaborate audio/video
| reproduction equipment is data-driven, backed by measurement of
| audience immersion.
|
| Probably there's something on high-precision work like remote
| surgery too.
|
| It's all valid, it's all applicable.
|
| The other side of the argument is that humans tend to be
| argumentative, judgemental, dismissive, and unaware of the
| extensive refinement and reshaping of sensory inputs that goes
| on in their heads. So they'll tend to dismiss inquiries into
| this, in my experience. It has to be tediously crafted as a
| suitably high-status pursuit but not too high.
| anotheryou wrote:
| one interesting part to me is: I don't think we need 3D VR.
| Movies, even on a small screen can be totally immersive.
| knappe wrote:
| This article may be 6 years old, but it jives with my experiences
| having worked remotely for a variety of companies and in a mix of
| remote/onsite organizations for 11 years. In fact, the moderation
| suggestion is exactly how I've solved the caucus problem without
| actually being able to name the problem or the solution. This
| article is going to be my go to for referencing how meetings
| ought to be run and why.
|
| The only other article that really feels like it nails a nagging
| problem that I've never been able to articulate but stumbled
| across often is "Why developers don't water the plants"
| https://yorkesoftware.com/2017/05/03/why-dont-developers-wat...
| peterbozso wrote:
| Answering the title: like we do at GitLab.
| https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-rem...
| el_duderino_ wrote:
| Is working with GitLab as nice as it sounds? Every time I read
| the employee documentation I get the feeling working there
| would be a great experience.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Fully agree with the article's focus on proper meeting
| discipline.
|
| This can be coupled with Edward Tufte's suggestions on how to
| present at a meeting. To summarize, he says that there is no
| point sending a presentation in advance .. most will not read it
| anyway. Instead of a presentation, write about 5-6 six pages of
| prose and hand them out at the beginning of the meeting. Every
| one will scan the document in their own ways and write up
| questions. After 20 minutes or so, start discussing the document.
| This way, the presenter doesn't have to drone on about things
| that everyone knows, and one can focus on real questions.
|
| https://www.edwardtufte.com/files/Consume_Produce_14_15.pdf
| xingped wrote:
| Haha, you say that, but from years of personal experience with
| this meeting style, what really happens is you end up getting a
| lot of questions which are clearly answered further up/down in
| the document or questions which are completely pointless or
| nonsensical to ask but people like to just be heard and make
| themselves look good for having something to say.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| I hear you, which is where one needs a no-nonsense moderator
| who will say "that has been answered on page 1", and who has
| the authority to shut down the high caucus noisy people
| spencerchubb wrote:
| To my knowledge, the 6-pager was popularized by Bezos. It
| requires the document to be _very_ well written, or else the
| 6-pager will be wasting the readers ' time. It also requires
| strong reading comprehension, which frankly, most employees do
| not. It works well for Amazon execs because they are all sharp
| kkfx wrote:
| I suspect that most people have issue on mere work tools, they do
| know by names tools from another era, while they never really
| used them, but they do not know the modern tools, so they create
| in their own minds strange hybrids between the old tools they
| never used and the new one.
|
| In the past was common having meetings in a physical room,
| because the office was a needed tool due to paper-based
| workflows, and since attending demand certain time not only to
| meet but also to prepare the meeting, going to the right place
| and so on they was organized in certain formats. Things are, or
| should and must be different, but most fails to understand how to
| use new tools properly.
|
| In the modern connected world attending a meeting is damn cheap,
| but we also have other tools to collaborate and depending on the
| task such other tools are better. Having searchable text trails,
| developing certain topics slowly a message at a time, having few
| "spontaneous" meetings between only few, than openly discussing
| something often is much better. But you should know modern tools
| and all must use them seriously.
| gumby wrote:
| We have a system that works well for our small founding team.
|
| Normally I am pretty hardcore that meetings need an agenda (can
| be loose) and intended outcome _when the meeting invitation is
| sent out_ , or else I don't attend.
|
| BUT our small founding team has an exception: we have a daily,
| morning, remote, agendaless meeting. It's the opposite of a
| standup: you can talk about anything. Sometimes it's things that
| have fallen through the cracks; I can't help doing standupy
| things myself ("this is what I'm doing today in 20 seconds" but
| that's just me;) we also hear that so and so's daughter just got
| engaged, someone else will be busy coz their spouse will be
| having a procedure today and they want to drop them off/get them
| from the hospital, etc. it's to provide the "water cooler"
| experience of in the office. Important things get decided too.
| And we skip sometimes, perhaps one day every other week, since
| it's like a bus and will come around tomorrow again.
|
| We do overlap in person at times in the lab but they aren't
| awkward because we all have a common social context.
|
| It won't scale as we grow, unfortunately.
| soneca wrote:
| We have that habit in the small company I work too, and it's
| great. It does not scale indeed, and it only works if, outside
| of those, you only have very few meetings, but I enjoy having
| this more humane and organic connection with my coworkers
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as
| possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be
| _ad hoc_ (so no daily standups or weekly roundups).
|
| As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil,
| but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one
| person can present information to the group, that can be an
| email.
|
| If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with
| his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole
| group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared
| document.
|
| A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs
| to discuss a topic together and reach a consensus or make a
| decision. If it's just for communicating information, there are
| better, asynchronous alternatives.
| j45 wrote:
| Better meeting skills in person help make remote meetings better.
|
| Lots of great tips in the comments, for me it's making sure
| meetings don't become a timepass.
|
| Meeting cadence whtn the meetings are new is important. Often
| eaiser to have a regular meeting and a mini check in the frist
| while until things are going.
|
| Ongoing Cadence is important, too often or too little time to get
| things done can be hindrance.
|
| Days of week can make a difference too. Talk Tuesday morning and
| Thursday afternoon to leave time for people to start dealing with
| their week, and also on Thursdays to have enough time to finish
| something for Friday.
|
| The later in the week a meeting is, the less that can be done
| about it that week and it can perpetually push into the next
| week.
|
| Group note taking and agenda - there are neat meeting management
| apps out there that make things more interactive like carrying
| forward agenda items automatically, sending out the agenda for
| you in advance, etc.
|
| Note taking - This has become easier with AI, but having someone
| still send them out is great. Depending on whether management
| wants, having an out line of people's tasks documented to them
| can make it easier, but everyone should be taking notes to not
| get dependent on this. If this can be available often meetings
| can be shorter.
|
| Agendas and concise materials before meeting- can help people
| catch up and prepare to help make sure the meeting is about
| decisions and discussions in support of a discussion, and not
| discussion for the sake of doing the work on the meeting itself.
|
| Juniors first - one for the best things Ive ever seen is having
| juniors offer their input and thoughts first, which can be
| followed up outside the meeting with ongoing mentorship with
| seniors. it can be as simple as this is what I have learned to
| understand about this, and the rest of the team learns that they
| can rely on this person more.
|
| From a tech side, something novel and fresh every so often can
| help. Learn to use Zoom/Teams/Mmmhmm and it keeps it visually
| interesting and easy to pass around updates.
| dusted wrote:
| "The only winning move is not to play."
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| "if we do online meetings all of you can work from home"
|
| any other questions ?
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