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David Ayers edited this page Jan 20, 2023 · 17 revisions

Running effective & useful meetings

My Meeting Manifesto

Throughout my career, I have had many thoughts on meetings and how (generally speaking) they aren't very effective. I sent a version of this manifesto to the then-CEO of a company I worked for because change like this has to come from the top. In the meantime, I do my best (with varying degrees of success) to live by the thoughts outlined below.

In 2022, I read A Minute To Think by Juliet Funt and participated in a 12-week program with our whole department learning new habits and behaviors. I have updated my manifesto to include some valuable ideas that I learned from the book and training.

Anti-Patterns

  • The purposes of meetings are often unclear; there are often no agendas shared in advance, and the subject lines of the meetings can be vague (the infamous "update" comes to mind).
  • There are lots of 30-minute meetings. Which, in and of itself, is fine. But, in my experience, they always run over. People are scheduling 30-minute meetings to squeeze one more thing into their day. But it has the opposite effect; the meeting takes just as long, and now they are late for the rest of the meetings on their schedule.
  • Meetings are booked back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And so people are late to their next meeting because even if their last meeting finishes on time, they still have to get to their next meeting (take a bio break or take a breath).
  • People use their devices (phones or laptops) during meetings, which causes them to miss essential discussion points. Or worse, people have to repeat themselves because they don't have the full attention of others in the meetings. This is made much worse by the new reality of our hybrid world. You're using a computer to join the meeting, so the temptation is very strong to check that email you just received.

I realize that I can't change anything outside of my team. But, where we can control things, we can set the tone for meetings that we're responsible for. Over time, it will start to have an impact on others. And it will, for sure, impact our team.

The Manifesto

Before you schedule a meeting:

  • Can this meeting be an email or an MS Teams message?

For meetings that you are scheduling:

  • Decide in advance what the purpose of the meeting is and what outcomes we want at the end of the meeting.
  • Carefully consider the attendee list, and use "optional” for those that are genuinely optional
  • When you schedule the meeting, be aware of and look at people's availability. If you have to schedule on top of someone else's meeting, check with them first, or assume their attendance is optional.
  • See if there's a way to minimize time away from people's flow; can this meeting be scheduled in a block of other meetings?
  • Give some thought to the meeting title -- it's going to show up on people's calendars. Can it be expressed in a way that conveys the purpose of the meeting and not be vague? (i.e., Decide on our use cases for DataDog vs. APM Tool).
  • Include relevant information in an agenda sent with the meeting invite. This article has some pretty good tips on crafting a good meeting agenda. I particularly like the part where he suggests that agenda items be written in the form of a question.
  • If a meeting is purely a status update, consider providing that via email instead of scheduling a meeting. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with status update meetings; sometimes, they can be helpful, but be mindful of what needs a meeting and what doesn't.
  • If there is supporting documentation or pre-read information that's useful, include it in the meeting invite.
  • Don't schedule a 30-minute meeting unless you are absolutely sure your agenda allows for it. For something like getting some key people together and making a quick decision, 30 minutes might be acceptable. But these are likely very rare. Any sort of discussion around any topic will likely take longer than 30 minutes. And don't even have 30-minute meetings; make them 25 minutes instead -- that extra 5 minutes means everyone gets a quick break before the next meeting.
  • Schedule other meetings for 50 minutes (if you've seen an invite from me, you've likely noticed that I mostly do this already). If the meeting runs a few minutes over, there is still time to get to the next one. Or time to quickly check your email.
  • End your meetings on time. Schedule a follow-up meeting if you didn't finish the topics you wanted to cover. If you are using MS teams, it now has a handy feature that notifies you when you have 5 minutes left. Pay attention to this and use it as a prompt to wrap up.
  • Take notes and recap decisions and action items to everyone that attended.

For meetings that you are invited to:

  • Reply to the meeting invite to indicate your status: Accept, Decline, or Tentative. For Declines and Tentatives, include some reason.
  • If you believe your presence isn't strictly necessary, there might be a need for the other meeting attendees to have you available, just in case, you can be on-call for the meeting. Keep the calendar on your schedule, stay at your desk, but don't attend. Be available if you are needed to pop into the meeting. If you're going to be on-call, let the meeting organizer know.

For meetings that you are attending:

  • Don't pull out your phone unless you have to.
  • Don't have your laptop open unless you are presenting or taking notes (and actually, you know, take notes).
  • Don't go to the meeting if you are so busy that you need to work on something during the meeting. Working on something else on your laptop during a meeting effectively steals everyone's time and sends a message that what you're working on is more important than the meeting, which might be true! In which case, skip the meeting, or ask to have it rescheduled. I'll admit that I struggle with this on the days I'm working from home, and I have even taken to pushing my chair back a bit and making sure my hands aren't near the keyboard.
    • Special Exception: For some virtual meetings, when your attendance isn't necessarily mandatory, but you have an interest in the discussion (or otherwise might have chosen on-call, as defined above), we have been experimenting with "soft listening" in meetings, with some guidelines around it:
      1. Let the attendees/meeting organizer know that you're going to do it (I have done this with a chat message to all attendees, something like "I'll be soft listening and off camera for most of the meeting, but I'm here if anyone needs me").
      2. Go off camera, so your lack of attention isn't a distraction to others that are paying attention.
  • Give your full attention. Limit side conversations.

Please share this with your teams, and let's try to set a positive example for the rest of the company! It's not my intent to point fingers at anyone, and I'm not trying to make any of this punitive. Let's be gentle and help each other do better around this; it might take a while to break some old habits and build new ones. I also realize that some of the statements I made above are hyperbolic; I'm sure lots of us already do these things.

Tips and tricks

  • It's usually much easier to find time for recurring meetings by looking 1-2 months in the future, scheduling the recurrence starting then, and backfilling with one-off meetings.
  • If you have recurring meetings, ensure they don't outlive their usefulness. Perform retrospectives with the attendees after a time to ensure they still make sense.
  • You can set up Outlook to automatically shorten meetings.
  • A bit tongue-in-cheek, but you can use Should it be a meeting? to help answer the question.

Bonus Points

I used to have a section here on “Meeting Free” days. I've updated my opinion on this topic over time and now approach it differently. I block my calendar on Fridays for “Focus Time” rather than “Meeting Free” time. I have given permission to my team to do the same (and gotten buy-in from the larger technology organization, so they understand the purpose).

Part of the reason for this switch was thinking about what a meeting is. On Fridays, many folks on the team use that opportunity to pair or group up and work on particular problems that might need some focused time. Are these meetings? I started jokingly referring to these as “working sessions” instead of meetings to get around my self-imposed “Meeting Free Friday”.

Other Interesting Ideas

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