A Murderer's Row of Meetings

 

This image proves meetings could always be worse.

In my last post I made my disdain for meetings explicit.  In this post, I'll start calling out the meetings that I think cause the most harm.  I'll start with Public Enemy No. 1.

[Note: I realized after starting this post that it will require a few follow-ups to get through the list.  Apparently, my ability to wax poetic on my dislike of meetings is even greater than I anticipated.]

Status Meetings

Nothing says I respect your time less than the good ol' status meeting.  Let's shove everyone who's working on disparate tasks into the same space-time corner and run through their details with all the charisma associated with fascist architecture.

The ostensible reason for such collective punishment is often this - the meeting gives everyone an opportunity to learn about other facets of the project (or projects if this is an especially brutal uber-status meeting) that they're not directly working on.

This is definitely a case where the theoretical notion deviates wildly from reality.  At one point early in my management career, I attempted to take notes during my boss's status meetings in order to force myself to concentrate.  Even among that small group of my peers, I immediately got lost.  The day-to-day jargon that arises from working on a particular task becomes too specialized for anyone not working on the task to follow without stopping the presenter every other sentence to provide detail.

This isn't a bad idea if you really want to delve into the details, but that would require a status meeting 2-4 times the current length.  Extending an already boring meeting by that duration is sure to make you dartboard fodder among your co-workers with little value to show in return other than being labeled a know-it-all.  Being able to understand everyone else's status after such a meeting has the same usefulness as being able to recite pi to 72 digits (I'm happy to say I can remember it to 5 places - 3.14159 - and that's only due to my reliance on a Simpson's quote).

So as a peer, these meetings are useless, but what about as the manager of people leading these efforts?

Look, I've worked for some really smart people, some of whom likely have better attention spans than I do, but, for the sheer volume of information being shoveled toward management in these meetings, it is impossible for anyone to absorb the tsunami of verbal/slide deck output pointed in their direction.

But, because no one wants to entertain the idea that, at a certain level, we are unable to sufficiently comprehend everything we're in charge of, we continue to go through these set pieces.  Employees drone through laundry lists of accomplishments to demonstrate how busy they are while managers nod in unison to indicate how engaged and goshdarn intellectually intimidating they are.  Bonus points if they can throw a presenter off their game (especially when there's a large audience) to ruin a Pollyanna moment with an impromptu discussion about the actual status rather than the reported status.

Then there are the people who admit that they hold status meetings because no one has responded to the prior status solicitations and collective justice for such bold mockery must be meted out.  This, at least, is a realistic, if cynical, take on the meeting.  But it's also like withholding recess from the class because a small group acted out during long division drills.  

Maybe the reason people don't respond with status updates is either (a) they're busy doing the work that requires a status report or (b) the status reports are so frequent or arcane that it's either difficult to provide exacting details or mentally exhausting to say the same thing for the 5th time in a row to the same audience.

Status is a necessary part of a manager's job, so what to do, if the meeting is useless?  In case it wasn't obvious from my last post - write it down.  Also, keep the report to a minimum.  For each individual team, a week's status report really shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to compose.  As the manager, you're not really going to remember a lot of extraneous details, and, even if you do, you're not going to be able to follow up on a lot of minutiae.

Dashing off a response to get some clarification or, on the infrequent occasions that someone needs more help, spending more in-depth time to assist can all be kicked off by a 2-3 line weekly status update.  Don't prematurely create more work for yourself or your employees by requiring a lot of additional data or, even worse, requiring a formatted PowerPoint slide deck (if you can only consume written content via slides, I suggest you pay a visit to your old kindergarten teacher to get a handle on the basics of reading comprehension).

The trick in most cases won't be getting your employees to respond (though they'll probably need a few gentle reminders from time to time), but rather to keep them from writing too much.  Though no one wants to write status reports, no one wants to be perceived as doing too little, either.  If you ask for 2-3 lines with an emphasis on the struggles the team is facing don't be surprised if you get 10-20 bullet points worth of every minor accomplishment for the week.

It's imperative to hammer home the point that the exercise should only take 5 minutes a week and should include the team's pain points as well as their accomplishments.  If all you're getting is good news, you're not really getting status, you're just getting bullshit, and bullshit is extremely hard to do anything with (other than use it to promote yourself as the best billionaire in the world).

Having a more targeted status update is a win for everyone: 

• Your employees don't need to spend wasted time crafting something that is write once/read never.  
• You don't have to spend time putting together a carefully crafted production of the micromanagement waltz.
• You can get a succinct summary of the issues facing your team.
• By following up on this small list of tasks, you also demonstrate to your employees that you're paying attention and value their work.
• By insisting on receiving bad news, you have the opportunity to show them your value by helping them get past pain points.
• This, in turn, builds trust because you're not insisting on only hearing positive outcomes, so problem-solving and a movement toward psychological safety becomes much easier.
• If you find it worthwhile, you can combine all of the reports from your employees so others, if they so choose, can see what their peers are working on without holding them hostage to an interminable presentation.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.