The state of meeting culture and an emerging new paradigm.
The state of meetings
How much do you spend your time in meetings? 10% 20%? 30%?
I’ve taken a look at some industry surveys and this is as high as 50% for managers and around 30% for individual contributors. This is increasingly the case in our post covid era, where scheduling a virtual call has never been easier.
But wait a minute… how many meetings are actually useful? Thinking back to when I was working at a large fintech company, I was often in meetings twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the paint to dry. Most of the time, I didn’t understand why I was invited, what value I was adding to the meeting and who is going to do what afterwards. An even more astute point is why I accepted these meetings in the first place. Clicking yes seems to be my default.
This has a big impact on productivity. Not only does the meeting itself cost time, but there is also a switching cost that has been documented in research and books such as Deep Work. Accounting for the number of participants and the length of each meeting, this could stack up to one of the largest debts of productivity.
Now I am not trying to undermine all meetings. They are very important in the communication and transfer of ideas. Only the subpar, inefficient ones are in question.
Tasks vs Meetings
Meetings form a juxtaposition with tasks. On one hand, tasks are planned out with a detailed-oriented approach, placed on meticulous swimlanes and kanban boards. Each is scoped out with clear descriptions and time for completion. On the other meetings are made without proper discussion points, booked adhoc-ly and are not tracked. This is interesting, especially as the time spent in meetings could be much longer as a collective than tasks.
One argument is that Meetings are more free-flowing and this is how ideas are created. My counter-argument is that tasks themselves are also under the same classification. How to do something is never on the scope. only the what and why. The implementor has total freedom in how to implement a feature. In reality creative meetings are few and far between and need to be structured and managed in a very specific way – not the way the vast majority of meetings are.
Meetings as a way of looking busy
If you’ve read Bullshit Jobs, this is a core concept where since the 1950’s employers are paying for your time. This means there is a certain entitlement for them to make sure you are doing nothing but work in during work hours. You better be there, even if there is nothing to do. This, in turn, I believe has transformed employee behaviour to the point where they will devote a large part of their time in meetings in order to fill out their day.
Culturally, meetings also became a defacto and normalized way of expressing you are busy and important to the organisation. “Oh, I’m really busy today, I have X meetings”, “Gotta rush, I’ve got a full day of meetings!”, “I was stuck in a meeting for x hours” is totally normal. I am a culprit of this myself and there is a feeling that just having the meeting shows you are productive.
Hey can I have 5 mins? ⏳
Another cultural norm is asking for a quick call. First of all, it’s never 5 minutes. Second of all, the onus is placed all on the answerer and it’s an easy way out for the asker. No thought needs to go into asking.
A typical conversation would be
On Teams/Slack:
A: "Hey can I have 5 mins? It'll be faster on a call."
B: "Sure."
<Insert 5 mins of chit-chat>
B: "So what do you want to ask?"
A: "Oh, yea. What do you think of X?"
<B quickly tries to think about this topic he hasn't looked at in 4 months>
B: "Hmmm, yeah maybe try Y?"
A: "Okay thanks!"So long Old World meetings, introducing New World meetings 🌍
Drastic changes need to happen with communications on the project and team levels. I believe companies are aware of this and are in fact looking for solutions to improve their meeting culture. In the New World:
Meetings are planned well ahead of time. Planned and organized pathways of communication are vital to reduce meeting time and improving productivity in a project. The advocation of the meta-meeting (meeting to plan out meetings) should not be shied away from. Having these at the start of a long-term project helps define the roles of different meetings and decide where discussion is needed. A process similar to the Scrum ceremonies is a great start and promotes teamwork at the right time.
Meetings are thought of as the last resort, not the first option. The asker should always be required to articulate their asks fully. This makes the sender more responsible and forces them to think twice before setting up a meeting. The answerer should be stingy with their time and feel that saying No is okay. This rebalances the dynamic for both parties. Offline communication often trumps a call since both parties can give more informed decisions, have time to get to the bottom of things and have a written copy to refer back to.
Meetings are on a need-to-know basis. A big component of the time waste function is the number of people in a meeting. Only the people who have input into a meeting should be in it. Receivers can comfortably wait for the offline summary. As a non-golden rule, any meeting with more than 10 people should raise suspicion.
Project managers map out the information flow, decision requirements and meetings across the whole project. In the future, the project manager maps out the information and decisions, including the sequence, frequency, participation and output requirements of meetings across the whole project. This will ensure the best route to successful completion and makes sure that the right people are involved at the right time. This can even happen across projects over the same time period, particularly where multiple projects interface with each other.
Final thoughts
In summary, meetings are killing collaborations. Many just get in and get out of meetings just for the sake of it. It’s no longer the awesome sessions where ideas are created. Project manager’s philosophy and mindset will be the key to turning the tide and making meetings useful, fun and efficient again.