meetings

This Meeting Didn’t Need To Be An Email

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

There’s a joke we’ve all heard – and probably repeated – “this meeting could have been an email.” It’s popular because it’s true, we’ve all had the meeting that could have been an email, and let’s be honest we’ve probably held those meetings. We’re all part of the problem.

But I’d like to argue that this joke wrong in some cases. That meeting didn’t need to be an email. That meeting didn’t need to exist in any form – email, chat, and so on – and that’s the real issue.

Am I going to analyze a joke about having too many meetings? Yes I am. If you don’t like it, send me an email.

So let’s take a look at this joke. We wasted a bunch of time getting people into a room, virtual or otherwise, to discuss things or share data. Some of us probably didn’t need to be there, certainly some of us didn’t want to be there. The end results probably could have been done in an email, not necessarily even a chain, just one.

The joke isn’t quite as funny when you analyze it, is it?

But here’s the thing. The meeting in question – or the email in question – is held because something had to be settled or something had to be done, or something had to be cleared up. Be it a meeting or email, something had to be done because something else didn’t.

So the real question is what was needed to avoid the meeting or the email that could have replaced it.

Was there some document that didn’t exist so people had to discuss it? Was there a signoff that could have been automated but is instead 5 people in meeting knowing 3 of them didn’t need to be there? Did people just not talk in the past and now you’re sitting in an actual room for hours because you could have done something earlier?

That meeting didn’t need to be an email. It needed to be a process. It needed to be an accurate help document. It needed to be a form in your software. It needed to be something that didn’t waste people’s time. It needed to not happen.

Now I am going to defend meetings as I schedule them as part of my job. But a good meeting is held when needed and should prevent even more time-consuming things from happening. A good meeting prevents other meetings.

But we shouldn’t just replace meetings with email. We have to make as many unnecessary.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Work From Home Findings: Please Rethink Meetings

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

So if we all work from home more, we still have to talk to people. That means meetings, and not just the usual ones. This is something that the Pandemic is teaching us, and reality is a harsh teacher and a harsher grader.

If you’re working from home, you’ve probably encountered this: you start holding more meetings! You can’t find people because you can’t walk to their desk and everyone’s schedule is now different! So what do you do? You schedule a meeting.

So if you’re anything like me, suddenly all your day is meetings. Sure, they’re meetings to do things you’d usually do anyway, but they’re still meetings with all that entails. Me, after having a day with six and a half hours of meetings, I realized we’ve got to rethink meetings for Work From Home.

Which leads to this blog post, because again, I had six and a half hours of meetings. 

We have to acknowledge that meetings are not always the best tool for people to connect. Meetings are good to brainstorm, to sign off on consensus, to train, and for Q&A. Many times we use them just because we can’t get someone, or to ensure everyone talks to everyone, and so on. We use meetings as a patch because we’re not doing better.

This isn’t just draining, as meetings can be, having too many meetings ruins the joy of human contact. That’s bad as it is, but during a Pandemic, when we’re alone, having so many meetings you’re glad to be isolated isn’t healthy.

Now, once we admit that, what can we do? What can we do to communicate and not schedule a ton of meetings? I’m glad I asked for you!

First, we have to ask why we hold the meetings we do and what the goal is. We should ask why we have to do it and then what we really need to happen and why. Then we can move on to better methods – or just not doing things.

Secondly, we need to find ways to make our tools and processes work so we don’t need elaborate meetings. Good project planning tools like Rally, Jira, and Service now can save time. We need automated forms and orders, and so on that we can fill out. Literally, we should minimize unneeded human contact to focus on the needed.

Third, we need to consider ways to leverage existing communications tools like Slack, Zoom, etc. better in ways that don’t necessarily involve meetings. Channels for specific check-ins, open offices, and the like. We need to decide how to use tools better because we’re doing things by habit not a strategy.

Fourth, we need to consider meeting alternatives – the “meeting-like” if you will. This could be some people having Open Offices where anyone can “drop into” the meeting. This could be timed check-ins to determine if a meeting is necessary to save time. Just shoving everyone into a virtual room isn’t the way; we need alternatives.

Fifth, we need to improve our business processes constantly to minimize unneeded meetings and anything else unneeded. Our goal should be to get better, period.

Work From Home is something we need more of; meetings are not something we necessarily to increase. We need to rethink them in the hopefully better world to come out of this mess.

Though I don’t mind holding a few meetings to figure how to get rid of them.

Steven Savage

My Agile Life: More Talking Less Meeting

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

As I’ve noted, doing personal Agile (in my case Scrum) makes you more aware of ways Agile goes wrong on the job or in your friend’s jobs. It’s contrast, because you can get your life running smoothly with Agile, so breakdowns elsewhere become more apparent.

An important part of Agile is that people communicate, often several times a day, perhaps even unscheduled. This asynchronous communication lets them meet and talk as needed, making the team open and adaptable. It turns development into a dialogue and is about meeting as needed, not meetings.  Communication is meaningful.

Sure there’s the classic Scrum standup (often done in non-scrum processes) but that’s the bare minimum. Good Agile is about good communications, and that doesn’t mean endlessly sitting in conference rooms. That means dialogue when you need it.

Even solo Agile requires communications that can be spontaneous – maybe even moreso when, say, you need to ask someone if they know what it is you found while cleaning the garage.

I’m guessing that if you’re doing Agile at work – and perhaps at home – you’ve got a lot of items blocked because you can’t get ahold of people. Hell, even if you’re not doing Agile I’m going to guess that you need a lot of signoffs to get things moving.  Those signoffs are probably not happening.

My guess is things aren’t moving. You can’t get people to respond. No one is talking but everyone is busy.

What do we do when we need people? We schedule a meeting. Then we have more meetings . . . and it’s harder to reach people.

Remember my theory that we can’t reduce meetings due to meetings? Yeah, this sounds familiar. We also have so many meetings we can’t talk to people.

We’re now so busy talking, because we didn’t talk, that we can’t talk.

So let me make a further radical proposal in Agile – if you have to schedule meetings to take care of five or ten minute touchbases, maybe you’ve got too damn many meetings as it is. OK, my guess is you always think you have too many meetings, but if you’re endlessly blocked because you can’t talk to someone, then it’s out of hand. I’ll also bet most people are blocked because of . . . meetings.

Let’s fix this.

Imagine if you worked on decreasing meetings, but increased the ability for communicating. Dream a dream like this:

  1. Start cutting out meetings, period. Encourage people to read reports, signoff, and look at information radiators. Verify don’t brief, use tacit signoff.
  2. Encourage spontaneous communication when possible. Sure, you’d have to set up some rules so people weren’t bombarded, but it’d help. Besides, when people practice open communication they also learn when not to interrupt others.
  3. Encourage people to block time on calendars where they cant’t be bothered. I do this at home and at work – when I have to focus, I get me some me time. A big calendar block of “DON’T BUG ME” does wonders.
  4. If you have problems, schedule Open Hours for important folks, where people know they’re available. Think of it as a middle ground between spontaneous communication and regular meetings.

There’s my radical thought of the day. If you start reducing meetings, maybe people will actually communicate.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve