I had a long day yesterday at work, I had a lot of meetings.
So I thought to talk about meetings today.
If you ask most people, they’ll agree: meetings suck so hard they could be patented by Dyson. Yet, we spend a ton of times in meetings every working day. At least, I know I do.
Why is that?
For sure, many meetings should be an email. Most status update meetings (but not the review and discussion that can come out of that, I believe) for example.
In some cases, you’re inviting too many people to a meeting. It’s emotionally hard to get up and leave, and you never know if it might be useful to be there. That sucks too.
But many meetings are good, and bring lots of value to you, the other participants, and the business.
People globally spend approximately 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings, with organisations spending roughly 15% of their time on meetings. Unsurprisingly, 71% of those meetings are considered unproductive, leading to an estimated annual loss of $37 billion in the US.
The problem isn’t meetings themselves. It’s how we run them.
What are the most common types of meeting?
According to Seth Godin, most meetings belong to one of three categories:
- Meetings to inform. Where you are told stuff, or you’re telling someone stuff.
- Meetings to discuss. Where you are discussing with others about something, and getting your input is the goal.
- Meetings to approve. Where you hope the other party will say yes to something, but they might say no.
Simple framework, right? But here’s the thing: most people run all three types the same way, which is one of the reasons why meetings often suck. Each type needs a completely different approach.
Let me break down how to actually run each one.
Information Meetings: The Broadcast
Information meetings are to align everyone on critical information.
There are typically three situations where this is a useful use of anyone’s time: the “Big Update” meeting, the “Go/No-Go” meeting, and the “Quick sync” meeting.
The “Big Update” meeting is where we ensure that everyone has the same information, the same shared vision, and feels a connection to the bigger picture. Think, “Company Announcement” or “All Hands”. They’re not super frequent, but they’re often really useful.
The “Go/No-Go” meeting is where we ensure that we’re not missing anything before moving through a critical gate. For example, “Are we ready to launch next Thursday?”
How do you know if a “Go/No-Go” meeting is really a Status Report That Should Have Been An Email? Easy:
- Do all the participants have something to say?
- Do all the updates bring a useful reply?
If either is false, at least some updates and/or some people should belong to a thread, not a meeting.
The “Quick sync” meeting is a very short, very focused, crisp sharing of information. The most typical huddle is the standup meeting.
Why is a standup more useful as a meeting? First, it’s just faster: if it takes 3 minutes to go through all your updates, that beats typing things down. Second, it allows for spontaneous quick discussions: “I am going to pick up this task today” “Oh! You should first make sure this thing I’m working on is deployed, otherwise things might break!”. Third, it improves interpersonal dynamics.
How to Run Information Meetings
Keep them short and structured. Information flows one way, so there’s no reason for these to drag on. Aim for 30-45 minutes max.
Prepare your material beforehand. Have slides, documents, or at least a bullet point agenda. Winging it wastes everyone’s time.
Start with the bottom line. Lead with what people need to know, then provide supporting details. Don’t make people sit through 20 minutes of context to get to the point.
Leave time for clarifying questions. However, be careful not to turn this meeting into a discussion. If questions go from “What does X mean?” to “What if we tried Y instead?” consider having a follow-up.
Send a follow-up summary. People will forget half of what you said. A quick email with key points and any action items makes sure the information actually sticks.
Discussion Meetings: The Workshop
We work on hard problems. Sometimes, the best way to tackle them is to get some people in a room to discuss things. However, the number of people in the room matters here. Having 10 people in the room is not just diminishing returns: it’s actually counterproductive. The attendance list should be kept as small as possible.
You also need a very well defined problem, and a very well defined expected outcome. Something like “discuss technical hiring” is not it. “Improving hiring brainstorm - Review known reasons for hiring gaps, available metrics, and create a list of action items” is more like it.
How to Run Discussion Meetings
Set a clear problem statement. What exactly are you trying to figure out? “Let’s discuss the project” is useless. “How do we reduce customer onboarding time from 2 weeks to 1 week?” is actionable.
Invite the right people, not everyone. You want people who can actually contribute meaningful input. That’s usually 3-6 people max. More than that and it becomes a presentation.
Come with options, not blank slates. “What should we do?” gets you nowhere. “Should we do A, B, or C? What are we missing?” gets you productive discussion.
Assign a facilitator. Someone needs to keep the conversation on track, make sure everyone speaks, and prevent one person from dominating.
End with clear next steps. Who’s doing what by when? If you can’t answer that, the discussion wasn’t productive.
Decision Meetings: The Decision Point
Decision meetings are the best. In decision meetings, you have relevant data, you have a focused discussion on said data. You end up with a decision, and you move on.
The goal for the meeting is clear: to take a specific decision.
The reason the meeting needs to happen is that often you need a discussion in order to get to the decision. You’re not looking for just agreement: you need to actually talk your way to the decision.
How to Run Decision Meetings
Do your homework first. Come with a clear proposal, supporting data, and alternatives considered. Don’t make people do your thinking for you in the meeting.
Know your audience. What does the decision-maker care about? Cost? Risk? Timeline? Lead with that.
Be ready for no. Have a plan for what happens if you don’t get approval. Can you modify the proposal? Try again later? Move forward with a smaller scope?
Make the decision explicit. Don’t leave with “I think they seemed positive.” Get a clear yes, no, or “yes with these changes.”
Document the decision. Send a follow-up confirming what was decided and why. This prevents future confusion and re-litigation.
Could this meeting be an email?
Let’s start with the easiest time saving hack: not having the meeting at all.
Can you accomplish what you want with an email, a Slack message or by sharing a document?
If so, do that. For example, instead of having a “Presenting the weekly metrics” or “Project status update meeting”, you could send those metrics or that status update via email, or in an appropriate Slack channel, and take questions asynchronously if needed. You might decide to schedule an ad-hoc meeting if there is something to actually discuss in person about the metrics or the status later on (a Discussion Meeting).
As a rule of thumb, if people are primarily consuming information, just send them the information. This also applies to providing feedback to documents, and so on. If you’re expecting to have a significant conversation, then a meeting is fine.
Could this meeting do without me?
Obviously, the same idea applies from the other side. Whenever you’re invited to a meeting, ask yourself if you actually need to be there. I know, FOMO can be strong, and you really want to be there sometimes, but if a meeting is not an effective use of your time, you should make that time effective. This might mean making the meeting effective, or it might mean opting out of the meeting. Either way works.
A good heuristic is: “do I think I will have something significant to say in the meeting?” If not, you should not go. The one exception is “Big Update” meetings. Most likely, you’re not leading one. You should consider attending those.
You should feel fully empowered to decline meetings whenever appropriate. If you are interested in the information coming out of the meeting but don’t have much to contribute, “I’m not going to make the meeting, but I’d appreciate it if you shared the meeting notes with me afterwards.” is a great line to use.
Could this meeting be shorter?
Your meetings should be as atomic as possible. For example, if you need to discuss four projects with four different teams on the same topic, you should have four 30 minute meetings with only the specific team for the project you’re discussing, instead of a 2 hour meeting with everyone. If the outcomes of each meeting are relevant to the other teams, just share the meeting notes with everyone once you’re done.
If you’re invited to a long meeting, and the meeting becomes irrelevant after a while (or doesn’t seem relevant for the foreseeable future), politely excuse yourself, and if necessary ask to be called back in once it becomes relevant.
You also should not have a one hour meeting only because your calendar says the meeting is one hour. If the meeting objective is accomplished sooner, get your time back.
Does this meeting have a clear objective?
Lots of meetings don’t. While ambiguous jobs are hard, your meetings should still have a clear purpose. The litmus test for this is easy: can you state before you have the meeting what the output needs to be to consider the meeting “successful”? If you don’t know, or you thought “what output?!”, then your meeting has no clear objective.
All your meetings should have a clear objective.
The outcome of an information meeting should always be some tangible effect of the knowledge sharing. For “Big Updates”, often People Experience or management measures impact through surveys. For “Go/No-Go” meetings, the outcome is the shared understanding that we’re aligned and agree on either “Go” or “Not Go”. For huddles, all participants are aware of the bits of information shared, and are synchronously unblocked.
The outcome of a discussion meeting should always be a list of action items (the list could have one single item, but it should still be there), or a clear and final decision if that was possible.
The outcome of a decision meeting should be to have a clear decision taken on the topic. The decision might not be the one we expected to go with when we got into the meeting - sometimes things blindsight us - but there should still be a decision.
Rules for good meetings
Ok, now we know if we’re having the meeting, and what type of meeting (and therefore outcome) we’re going to have. How can we make sure the meeting is a great use of our time?
Here are some basic rules.
Be on time
Meetings should start and end on time.
Keeping people waiting in a room is disrespectful and wasteful, and it should not be tolerated.
Typically, you’re allowed to wait for people for 10% of the meeting time. That’s 3 minutes for a 30 minute meeting, 6 for a 1-hour meeting, and 1.5 for a 15 minute huddle.
Once the waiting time is up (not all the attendees are there and ready after the maximum waiting time), you should start the meeting. If the missing person is absolutely required in the meeting, you should feel empowered to apologize to everyone who showed up and cancel the meeting if you’re the organizer, or just stand up and leave if you’re just participating. Tolerating lateness breeds more lateness.
Once the meeting is getting close to an end, you should wrap up. Are you not quite finished? Close the meeting anyway, and take an action to reconvene to finish (or finish asynchronously if possible).
If you’re leading the meeting, call out that you need to wrap up 5 to 10 minutes before the scheduled end time. If you’re only participating, you can still remind everyone that the meeting is almost over and you should wrap up. Once time is up, you’re empowered to get up and leave.
Have an Agenda
Meeting agendas are the most underrated idea for good meeting hygiene. Everyone knows they should have one, but basically nobody actually makes them.
An invite for a one-hour meeting that only says “Project X sync” is basically useless. Should I attend? Am I required to achieve the goal of the meeting? No way to find out.
A meeting agenda doesn’t need to be some complicated, fancy templated thing. You just need to list what you want to do.
A good trick is to have items posed as actionable questions. For example, instead of
- Review roadmap draft for next quarter
You might have
- What projects are we planning to prioritize to maximize our merchant density KR?
- What is the right relative order between them?
- What resources do we need to allocate for each of them?
This way, everybody knows what the expected outcomes are (to answer those questions), and everybody knows if the meeting is on-track or not.
Give context
Along with the agenda, you should almost always have supporting material ready beforehand. We’re not going to discuss supporting material in detail here, but you should give the opportunity to your meeting’s attendees to not come to the meeting blind.
The goal of supporting material is to give context about the goal and agenda, so that we don’t need to spend collective time to get up to speed and agree on the background.
It should include: information you will be sharing or reviewing in the meeting, notes from previous meetings if this is a follow up, relevant documents that are part of the discussion, or anything else that you think might paint the picture before you actually meet.
Stick to the Agenda
Having an agenda is great. But it’s not very useful unless you actually follow it. There are very few occasions when you should deviate from your plan during the meeting, but it happens a lot - humans are naturally attracted to interesting novelty, even if it is counterproductive.
If you notice the discussion is off-path to answering the next question on the agenda, you should call it out: “this sounds like a useful conversation, but can we go back to the agenda please?”
What about if the new topic is actually important? A standard technique is to use a “Parking lot”. A parking lot is a space (like a shared document or a whiteboard corner) where you can note down any discussion or point that is off-topic but you want to go back to. Then, you can have an action item to take that new topic away.
This applies even if you’re done early - when the agenda is completed, the meeting is over. If you planned for a one hour meeting and you’re done in 25 minutes, that’s awesome. Go do something else. You have no right to force everyone to stay in the room for the remaining 35 on some other random topic, as important as that might be.
Avoid distractions
A hard rule in meetings should be, no laptops, no phones. The reason why is, humans have a single threaded language system in their brain. If you’re reading email or answering slack or multitasking in some other way, you’re physically unable to participate in the meeting.
And, if you’re not participating in the meeting, we already discussed, you should not be in the meeting.
The only reasons why you should have your laptop in a meeting is if you’re the designated note taker, or you need to present. If you’re not taking notes or presenting, your laptop should be closed.
There is no reason ever to have your phone out in a meeting. While we’re at it, phones on silent please.
Write things down
Things that aren’t written down never happened. What actions did we decide to take? Who’s doing them? By when?
Meeting notes don’t need to be some official legally binding document. The easiest way to take meeting notes is to add a meeting note document to your meeting by clicking on the “Create Meeting Notes” link in the invite.
That will automatically create a document with a reasonable template.
Now all you need to do is fill the gaps. Specifically, notes and action items.
Someone should be nominated note-taker at the beginning of the meeting, and they should share the notes to the appropriate audience (typically, all the people on the meeting invite, but might have more) as soon as the meeting is over.
Implementing Meeting Hygiene: Examples and Templates
Go/No-Go
Subject: Project X Go/No-Go
Duration: 30 minutes
We will go around all involved teams to align on any blocker or pending issue for the launch of the project.
Goal is to have clear shared status on project before launch planning.
Reference: project plan (link).
Agenda:
- Are we code complete backend?
- Are we code complete frontend?
- Are we code complete app?
- Are we fully tested?
- Is scaling and infrastructure ready?
- Do we have full contingency plans?
- Do we have KYC training complete and signed off?
- Do we have marketing aligned and ready?
Huddle
Subject: Consumer 3 daily standup
10 minutes, recurs daily.
Daily Scrum. What did you work on yesterday, what will you work on today, what is slowing you down.
Goal is a clear shared view on work progress in the team.
Agenda:
- Each team member:
- How have you progressed the sprint goal since your last standup?
- How do you plan to progress the sprint goal until your next standup?
- Is there anything that is slowing you down?
Project Discussion
Subject: Project XXX first design review
45 minutes
We will discuss the proposed technical design and alternative considered options for the project.
Reference: design document (link), product specification document (link)
Goal is to review and take action items to iterate on design.
Agenda:
- Is the design covering the requirements?
- Is the design following our best practices?
- Is the design documentation in the appropriate format and structure?
- What are the gaps in the design?
- What are the risks of this design?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?
Putting It All Together
Here’s the thing: many meetings try to be all things at once, and that’s where they go wrong. You’ll get better results if you separate them.
Instead of one 60-minute “project meeting” that tries to inform, discuss, and get approval, try:
- 15-minute status update (inform)
- 30-minute planning session (discuss)
- 15-minute decision meeting (approve)
They could be in the same slot, one after the other, but having that explicit structure (and sticking to it) will help massively.
Figure out what type of meeting you’re in, and you’ll have an advantage at trying to find the value. Even better, you’ll know how to run meetings that people actually want to attend.
And if you can’t figure out which type it is? That’s probably a meeting that should be an email.