Meetings, Am I Right?

Meetings aren't evil in and of themselves. They're fundamentally just people talking, right? And yet we hate meetings with a contempt that often borders on irrational rage. Probably because it's people talking.

Meetings have always been frustrating but I feel like it's become more pronounced in recent years since the rise of remote work during the pandemic.

Technology has made it that much easier to "hop on a call" and suddenly bring our coworkers into our home offices, one meeting immediately after another and without end. We don't even have to get out of our chairs and move to another meeting room! Video calls also carry a cognitive load that is literally exhausting.

“Can you hop on a call?”
Can YOU hop off a cliff?

— The Volatile Mermaid

It's reached such a critical mass that companies like Shopify felt compelled to "delete" almost all meetings sight unseen!

Naturally, as a tech company, Shopify wrote code to do this. A bot went into everyone's calendars and purged all recurring meetings with three or more people, giving them that time back.

Shopify's heart may be in the right place but I can't help but feel they might be looking past the actual problem here.

In a previous essay I advised that "showing contempt or disdain for meetings" is something that developers should try to avoid. Now, I knew it would touch a lot of developers' nerves—ramming a developer into a meeting when they're deep in code is an unforgiveable offense.

Of course, context switching is hard for everyone. As a result, everyone hates meetings. I get it, but I'm not personally opposed to meetings and I don't think they're intrinsically bad. Nobody is going to catch me using one of those meeting cost calculators to smugly point out how my precious time is being wasted.

However, I do think it's extremely easy to run meetings poorly and when it happens the perceived damage can be lasting. Meetings—organizing or attending them—aren't a casual, passive act. They require real effort.

It Takes All Kinds

Some kinds of meetings can't or shouldn't be avoided. Their utility is genuine and we can safely dismiss these as their purpose is self-evident. This includes:

• One-on-ones between managers and reports.
• Agile ceremonies—as long as everybody understands their purpose!
• Planning or designing a technical solution.
• An existential crisis for the company (i.e., the site is on fire).
• When a Slack or email thread has gone on far too long (i.e., the opposite of "this meeting could've been an email").

So, it's just all of the other kinds of meetings we have to watch out for. How do we identify and attend high-value meetings and also organize them ourselves? Here's what I do.

How To Attend A Meeting (Or Not)

When a meeting invite arrives in my inbox there's only one question I need to ask myself: will attending this meeting bring me value or will I bring value to the meeting?

If the answer is "no" or "I'm not sure" then I decline the meeting. It's as simple as that.

If the meeting has no agenda, appears with less than a day's notice, the organizer obviously didn't check my schedule, or the organizer made no mention of it beforehand then that's gonna be a "no" from me—I haven't been convinced of this meeting's value for myself or others.

If I decline your meeting, it means one of two things: (1) I don’t know why I was invited, or (2) I know why, but I am not buying it.

— rands

How politely I decline is at my discretion. If I care to, I'll let the organizer know I'm double-booked at that time or request more context before I can accept the invite. More often than not, however, I just decline and go about my day. If somebody really needs me there, they'll find me.

Furthermore, this value assessment doesn't stop with the invite. It extends to the meeting itself. Once I've agreed to attend, I must then be present, stay focused and avoid multi-tasking. Before the pandemic I made it a point to never bring my laptop to any meeting. That's not possible these days, so it takes even more concentration to have an effective meeting.

Conversely, I can also "decline" mid-meeting—I can politely leave early once I've extracted or contributed the value that was needed. Even worse, we should all sign off as soon as we've heard somebody suggest we "take that offline" two or more times.

How To Organize Your Meetings

OK, I've drawn some boundaries and I'm defending my calendar, but what about my own meetings? My advice is to embellish (the invite) and empathize (with the attendees).

Embellish The Invite

By "embellish" I mean that I put as much into the invite as I can to set expectations and then I over-communicate the invite itself.

This starts with the meeting title itself. I summarize as best I can and avoid dreadful non-titles like "Quick Chat" that tell us nothing. And a small pet peeve of mine—use proper grammar!

Is it okay to block my calendar off with a meeting title “leave me alone”

— Smoothie King

Next is the agenda, of course. For smaller meetings I'll at least summarize what we're going to talk about. One sentence is better than a blank description. For more involved meetings I'll outline all the topics to cover. Bonus points when I can timebox each agenda item, again, to set expectations for attendees. Anything on the agenda should lead to a result—a question answered, an action item created, and so on.

If I have any links or documents that serve as homework or pre-read material, I include them. I want people in my meetings to hit the ground running and start prepared. There's also a chance someone will pre-read and address part of the agenda ahead of time, thereby shortening my meeting.

My final embellishment is after the invite is sent. I'll advise the same people in Slack to watch for the invite and offer additional context. This might seem excessive but it demonstrates that the meeting, and its attendees, are important to me. And again, there's always a chance I'll start a discussion that gets me what I need and negates the meeting entirely.

Empathize With The Attendees

Demonstrating empathy at work is a true skill, and that includes when I'm organizing meetings.

For instance, the simplest way to show others that I'm trying to be respectful of their time is to use the scheduling/availability tool of my calendar to find a time that works for those involved. Why compound the pressure on my attendees by double-booking them when it only takes me a few minutes to see if they're even free?

Additionally, I prefer to book time that's adjacent to a attendees' existing meetings. This means I'm not adding a context-switching burden for people by dropping a meeting right in the middle of an otherwise empty afternoon, for example.

I'm also very clear about who's a required versus optional attendee and why—heaven is a meeting invite someone knows they can decline without any guilt.

Where applicable, I remind people when a meeting will be recorded. If someone is unable to attend this can give them some relief that they won't miss anything. And quite frankly, there are many meetings I wish I could've watched later at 2X speed if I'd had the chance!

Lastly—and this is a pet peeve of mine—I don't "give people their time back" if the meeting concludes early. Humans don't talk like that! I just thank people for their time and end the meeting.

omg thanks for ending the meeting 4 minutes early and "giving me some time back" -- now I can finally pursue my passions

— sarah

Sorry, Not Sorry...?

I wrote this with some hesitation because it feels a little bit facile. I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. If you've read this far and think all of this is self-evident—I agree!

The fact remains, however, that for years I've regularly coached people or listened to them complain about their unruly calendars. So, the problem does exist and must be confronted. This is what's worked for me.

Until such time as everyone everywhere magically creates perfect meetings we need to learn how to distinguish the good from the bad, establish some healthy boundaries, and perhaps—gasp!—even talk to each other.