Have you attended a meeting that was wasting your time? You probably felt it will be rude to leave the meeting in the middle, so you kept being there without giving or receiving any value. At the beginning of my career my manager told me once that I shouldn’t resist when CTO was wasting my time because I am getting paid for this time, and it’s not too bad for me to earn money doing nothing. That comforting thought reduced the pain, but it was a lie. It does harm me, and harms me on a long run, which makes is worse. It hits my self-worth, makes me less energised and motivated, less brave, and may switch from enjoying from making an impact to enjoyment of higher compensation. It harms both me and the company where I work.
Warning
Before going and quitting all meetings it’s important to acknowledge our limitations. Meeting that we might think is a waste of time could be critical for our team’s success. I had junior colleagues, who don’t think that teamwork is important and they saw no value in activities for improving communication. Not everyone will be able to identify the value of the meeting, but in this case the culture should support them and encourage them to ask “why”. I experienced that sometimes people who were disengaged at start, became the most active participants after they got the answer to their question: “What value does this meeting bring? How is this more important than the work I was doing?”. Generic answer “because that’s how we do things here” is the worst. The reason for each meeting should be crystal clear and it everyone’s mind it should overweight the work that was pushed away to make this meeting happen. Then comes the question about the duration and frequency. Even if the meeting is valuable, how long should it take to stay more valuable than the alternative activities?
What to do?
① If you are a participant
People can act as leaders and change the environment without having leadership positions. If something doesn’t make sense to you, talk to your colleagues and see what they think. You can grow your understanding and become engaged. If after talking you got even more convinced that meeting is pointless from the point of view of colleagues, raise your concern to meeting organiser. Do it privately first, this would produce better outcome. You may get information that you didn’t know before. After talking to you, the meeting host may at his next meeting thank you publicly for reaching out and explain the value with the colleagues. It’s best if he then checks (anonymously! for honest replies) if participants were convinced or they still think that other work activities are more valuable.
Things are not as smooth sometimes. If after reaching out to the host nothing changed, be ready for a bold move: leaving the meeting as soon as you notice it will be a waste of your time.
② If you are an organiser
There’s plenty of things you can do as a meeting organiser. Typically, your role is to ensure that you invite the right people with the right message. You might need different invitations for different participants to show them why it’s valuable for them.
Book more time than you need, but end early. You book 1 hour and write in the agenda that the aim is to finish the meeting in 30 minutes. Remind the plan to finish early at the beginning of the meeting and see how people will appreciate that.
Let people leave with one condition: they leave constructive feedback that can help you later to fix the problem.
Always be ready to improve. Ask for feedback and if you see a problem that is common for majority, apply it asap. If the problem is individual, address it with an individual and be flexible. Maybe you need to release some people at particular time.
If your meeting is a regular one, it accumulates a large portion of time and should be treated as an investment bucket in the portfolio. If you forget about building a healthy culture, a huge amount of code that Engineers produced, nobody will be able to maintain after they leave. How do I get a feeling when the balance is reached? I ask people about it. It is different from team to team and you reach the balance on case-by-case basis.
③ If you are a company leader shaping the culture
Make sure people feel safe to address concerns. That these concerns are transparent and taken seriously. Welcome skip-lead feedback to improve the behaviour of your directs. Define the culture that is best for your organisation and promote its values.
Attributions: Image by vectorjuice on Freepik
2 Comments
Thanks again!
Thanks.