
Tips to Improve Horrible Work Meetings - ScottW50
http://collectiveinnovation.com/tips-to-improve-your-work-meetings/
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Not even close. Here is how you deal with meetings:

0\. Assume by default that there should be _NO MEETING_. Make sure you have
always tried something to avoid a meeting (E-mail, phone call, status web
page, etc.). Web pages are useful because they serve as continuous references.

1\. Assume by default that the meeting does not need a room. Do not further
distract people by taking them away from desks, etc. where they might make
progress on something else during the 80% of the meeting where you know they
won’t really be needed anyway. Phones calls with VNC are good for this. Video
calls are not, as it’s distracting to see people looking off to the side most
of the time.

2\. Do not ever start a meeting without doing your own homework. Before
inviting yet another person to your meeting, strongly consider the overlap
between attendees and ensure that the extra person is really going to help. If
you must reserve a room, _visit_ the room in advance so you know it’s actually
big enough, isn’t missing a whiteboard and isn’t going to make you screw with
AV equipment for 15 minutes.

3\. Do not “fill” time. A 2 minute meeting is not a failure, it is a
resounding success.

4\. Do not waste time. Start on time or give like 2 hours notice if you
cannot. Display short slides. Answer questions simply. Anyone who doesn’t know
the details can ask. There should not be people fidgeting while someone
rambles for 20 minutes about something that, it turns out, everyone already
knows. Never hold meetings to request information you already have (e.g. no
round-tables to update status when you already had everyone E-mail you a
report). Do not use a meeting to go over slides on a projector where someone
has painstakingly copy/pasted code or other things that would have been better
reviewed in front of an actual terminal.

5\. Meeting should rarely be scheduled automatically, and if they are then
there should be no shame in periodically cancelling them. Do not meet every
week “just to meet”; have something to talk about. Or, if you have hardly
anything to say and it’s not time-critical, merge it into next week and cancel
this week.

6\. If time zones are an issue (e.g. other side of the world), send
information-dense messages that anticipate as many issues as possible,
containing answers to questions that may not have been asked yet, etc.
Otherwise you will end up scheduling meeting, with half the team dialing in
from home at 10:30 PM, to find out about stupid things that could have been
handled with a document.

