
How to Run a Meeting Like Google - jamesjyu
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2006/sb20060927_259688.htm
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mattmcknight
I sent this out to my colleagues two years ago and they took it as an insult.
The real problem is that meetings are an inefficient form of communication. I
once had to sit through a weekly around the room status meeting where everyone
tried to shine in front of the boss and brag about what they had been doing-
for two hours! That's 5% of my supposed 40 hours per week being subjected to
others bloviating about their accomplishments. I used to beg for timeboxing on
certain people, but it was never enforced. I started dialing into the meeting
on my cellphone from my desk so I could at least work. We even tried to make
the meeting into a daily update blog or something, but the idiot manager liked
to gather all of his subjects into the room and hold court once a week.

I like the board meetings I run. We talk about an issue for a designated
period of time, and then we vote on it. Closed. Meetings without a clearly
defined decision process tend not to make any decisions.

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brl
That's nothing. At my last job we used to have weekly 'status' meetings that
always turned into 3-4 hour fantasy brainstorming sessions about all the
fantastic features we could someday add to our product. Since I have pretty
low tolerance for unpleasant activities that are a complete waste of time I
would usually lose my fucking mind near hour 2 and then storm out of the
meeting to go back to work.

At least at your job people really accomplished things worth bragging about
rather than just sitting around and talking endlessly about all the great
things they could imagine themselves accomplishing.

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mountain_man
I worked at Google. Most meetings had way too many people in them, and 90% of
the people would sitting around using their laptops through them, attempting
to tune in when it was relevant. It wasn't really all that efficient.
Marissa's very special meetings were run in a special way, and were more
efficient, but teams meticulously prepared for their 5 minutes with her.

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stcredzero
I wonder if you could take "micro meetings" even further? Can you replace many
meetings with something akin to an open market? For example, instead of having
a meeting to decide which database back end to use, if you can, just use all
of them. Toyota took a trial approach with their hybrid drivetrain. They
actually had something like 10 independent projects and picked the best one.

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ramchip
Building a car probably costs more in production than in design, so you could
afford to have several design projects. But building software is nearly
_nothing_ but design... I couldn't imagine building 3 DB backend with 1/3 the
programmers workforce each and still making a profitable product.

Sometimes not deciding anything is good though. If instead of basing an app
strongly on a specific library/platform/etc., you program something fairly
generic and get to decide later, the more power to you.

~~~
hhm
I think some time ago, Microsoft used to have two different internal versions
of Word, for example... the one which was better won, and was the one used by
people.

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work
Isn't this how any meeting is supposed to be run?

~~~
trickjarrett
Supposed to, yes. But few companies have a person who's job is as specialised
as hers. Google is about efficiency and her job is to keep the meetings
efficient and organized.

I can't tell you how much I hate the meetings I have to go that devolve into
time wasting because there's no agenda etc.

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lnguyen
Actually any project manager worth their pay knows they should be doing this.

But even if they do, odds are they're going to run into problems of just
trying to schedule meetings in the first place (hence regular, weekly meetings
even if there's nothing to discuss), people unprepared even if an agenda is
provided, and not having enough political clout to make sure that the everyone
who needs to be there actually is or to shut someone up who's wasting time.

Mayer is in a position where she's not handicapped with those issues. Most
executives wouldn't be either. The question would be are the rest of the
meetings at Google this efficient?

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absconditus
In addition to various ad hoc meetings we current have:

\- a daily status meeting

\- a weekly department meeting

\- a weekly one on one

\- a weekly status report

\- an end of sprint status report

We also use an issue tracking system which records the status of everything we
are working on.

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MaysonL
And how's that working out for you? What percentage of your time is spent in
meetings? How much in preparing for meetings?

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lacker
My favorite part of Google meeting philosophy is that meetings almost never go
longer than an hour. If you're meeting for more than an hour, break it up into
smaller meetings, and most people shouldn't have to go to both of them.

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rokhayakebe
Meetings seem to be pointless. If everyone answered my emails and CCed
everyone else, I could go a year without meetings.

~~~
mixmax
Meetings are not only about hearing what data other pople present and
presenting your own. The reason you have meetings is that you can look someone
in the eye and ask them if they will _really_ be able to ship on monday. The
answer will often be different than if you send an e-mail.

Running a good meeting is about people and psychology.

~~~
rokhayakebe
If someone needs to see you in the eyes to deliver an honest answer, then you
probably do not need them in your company.

~~~
mixmax
It's not about being honest - I've been to many meetings with talented people
that thought they had everything under control but looking at their reactions
and behaviour yeilded another answer. These people were deeply honest, they
just hadn't seen all the perspectives and ramifications of what they were
doing, or were a bit too positive. Good managers know this and use it
productively - it is one of the primary functions of meetings.

This probably touches on one of the big differences between engineer types and
business types - engineers think it's all about technology and business types
think it's all about people. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

My point is that the communication you do in a meeting is very very different
from the communication you get from e-mail. Psychologists have found that when
you interact with people up to 90% of the communication is non-verbal. This
means that the bandwidth of talking face-to-face is ten times as high as
sending an e-mail.

There's a pretty interesting wikipedia entry on the subject:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-verbal_communication>

