Too many meetings

šŸ™‹ Questions
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I love working with people. I love being collaborative, pairing, and working in ensemble.

Also, today I accepted too many meetings. And not for the first time.

Also, I regularly see others bring up ā€œtoo many meetingsā€ as a problem in retros. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why donā€™t we say no? Is the work either urgent or important?

Iā€™m looking forward to tomorrow, when I donā€™t have meetings, bring it on.

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Yesterday we had a meeting where the organiser hadnā€™t provided any agenda AND didnā€™t show up.

Most people in the meeting didnā€™t know each other. So it took almost EIGHT MINUTES of complete silence before the bravest soul started inquiring what is this meeting about.

That was just incredible.

(the bravest soul wasnā€™t me, I donā€™t talk to strangers :grin: )

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Quick question:

Is it a movement, a manifest, or anything like it?

Even with no context, I loved this ā€œtoo many meetingsā€ sentence and would like to know more.

As a QAE, I often suffer from being in different meetings to discuss the same subjects with different audiences. Itā€™s painful

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Not yet, but feel free to start something and Iā€™ll join in. Just donā€™t hold too many meetings about itā€¦

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Iā€™m sorry you had to take part in this awkward group pain. That is truly horrific.

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not even a kick-off meeting? :pleading_face: lol

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Itā€™s hard to say, but most of the time either you need to play the ā€œreasonable guyā€ or may activate the ā€œpassive moveā€. I donā€™t recommend but sometimes happens.

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Surely we first need an alignment meeting, before we can arrange the kick-off meeting, and setup an agenda for the recurring meetingā€¦ Where is my MEME? :slight_smile:

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We had the same issue, only everybody brought it up. So we said only meetings before noon and we just blocked a slot in our agenda for ā€˜workā€™.

If people just plan meetings over your blocked agenda then I have an epic trick for you, follow the following steps:

  • Find a co-worker which suffers from the same amount of overload of meetings.

Tell him about the following plan

  • Book a meeting 2 hours long together with that person
  • Donā€™t join that meeting (neither does the other person)
  • Just work as you would normally do
  • Let everyone believe you had a meeting by just having it in your agenda

Itā€™s the best trick in the house! (or ā€¦ ā€œin the companyā€)

For meetings itself, Iā€™m pretty strict about them. If people join late I have 0 mercy, I will not repeat anything and just continue. If the meeting starts at 15:00, Iā€™ll make sure to be there at 14:59 and I will probably start before the timer hits 15:01. Meetings will go way quicker because everyone is on time (after a while), no chatty sessions etc and this is how meetings last MAX 15-30 minutes.

If anything in unclear, park it and move it to another session because it needs to be clarified more.
This attitude helps to avoid ā€œtoo many meetingsā€ because people will get the reflex to say ā€™ yea but if we present this, heā€™ll say itā€™s still unclear or unfinished and we need to work on it more anywaysā€™

Which is awesome cuz it saves you and others so much more time resulting into less meetings.

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ā€¦ I wonder if there is a plugin that allows you to only have like ā€œ5ā€ meetings planned during a work-week. If there are already 5 it would return ā€œ429 Too Many Meetingsā€ automatically :stuck_out_tongue:

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Maybe the movement name: ā€œ429 Too Many Meetingsā€ :smile:

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Sadly most of us seem to suffer from this. A few rules perhaps,

  1. Update Outlook so 1hr meetings default to no more than 50mins (30mins meetings reduced to 25mins). You can make this a default setting.
  2. Always ensure the meeting has some background and an agenda. Without it, feel free to not attend.
  3. Introduce something along the lines of ā€˜meeting free Fridaysā€™.
  4. Remember itā€™s OK to decline meeting invites if you have other urgent priorities.
  5. Block time out for lunch breaks if youā€™re particular about what time you need to get away and grab a bite.
  6. Meeting organiser must send out minutes/actions post meeting for the benefit of those who may have missed the meetings.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list and clearly this doesnā€™t guarantee a fix to our number of meetings each day woes but these are things that Iā€™ve been doing and it has helped to some extent. Hope this helps.

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This is such a good rule, we are starting to do this also. We often start now at 11:05 and end at 11:55
Or start at 11:00 and end at 11:50
I prefer the first option to start 5 minutes later, since if people donā€™t always follow this rule, you are still giving people the chance to get a quick coffee or drink.

Good tip!

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  • I plan all meetings for 30 minutes even if i know they will be longer - this focuses people on huring up and being prepared to discuss the topic not waste time in a meeting designing the feature. Itā€™s always cheaper in time cost to schedule a more focused working group with the people that matter and allows people to leave the meeting room if they are not needed.
  • If you donā€™t get a meeting agenda, itā€™s because I forgot to paste one in. People who forget to paste in an agenda can get a sideways query from me as to whether the meeting is worth having at all.
  • While waiting for people to arrive, make smalltalk to establish some room participation. I hate silence, Iā€™m an introvert but I hate silence and I think thatā€™s because Iā€™m a bit hyper. Meetings are a people thing we are not robots, ask the dumb questions, you will be surprised how often your dumb question was on everyone else mind too.
  • Disable the outlook meeting alert/warning timer at 15 minutes, that 15 minutes that the alert steals your attention for, eats into the pomodoro or other focus time that you were running before the meeting.
  • Not declining meetings is a problem - but it happens when people drift off the agenda and cover other work in progress, and people who declined then miss out on the off-agenda decisions. Thatā€™s why agenda matters, sorry, itā€™s that simple. It does not need to be FOMO.

We have meeting-free mornings (aside from stand-up) but this has not been widely shared with the senior leadership team, and I therefore advise people book their lunch times into the calendar as well as book some focus time as a dummy team block meeting. Just remember to disable the meeting notifications! Review and plan your day in those 1st 10 minutes when you login.

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You need to choose your battles. You do not have to attend all of them. I am frequently double and triple booked in the morning. Sometimes you need to block off an hour or two to get something done.

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