Ultimate Guide to Meetings
There are good meetings and bad meetings. There are necessary meetings and unnecessary meetings.
Clear goal: Alignment, Decision, Discussion
Meetings can speed up decisions and discussions vs. email/Slack/…
Don’t: Status updates,
No agenda: Don’t go there
Always have meeting minutes: Only document who was there, what was decided. No status, no information.
Meetings are not for you, but for the attendees.
Invite only who is really necessary
Make as short as possible
Be careful with recurring meetings, they often are filled with topics just because they are there
1:1 are essential, but are for the employee not for you
If necessary, have daily meetings for recruiting, projects , DON’T have weekly meetings, people will start working one day before the meeting
Make sure no-one is late, it waste lots of money of people waiting
End meeting early if possible, no need to fill it up just because everyone is there
Meetings are part of a communication strategy - imagine how information flows from the CEO/CTO/… to everyone who needs to know - and they can’t skip it / Only one part, repeat repeat repeat.
As a manager, instead of meetings have open office hours e.g. at lunch. Everyone can come and talk to you, often people only need your opinion or a decision, taking 5 minutes - they don’t need to schedule a meeting
Why everyone has so many meetings
- Indisciminate invitations
- Don’t want to take responsibility Invite everyone, “You’ve could have said something”
- Bad at decisions Can’t make them -> More meetings Can’t keep them -> More meetings No process -> More meetings
- Lack of control Ad-Hoc meetings to control outcome
- Skills / Low Quality Crisis meetings
- People love meetings For many meetings, and talking talking talking is easier than thinking hard on a problem Meetings do not have “results” they can be holden for
- Missing communication strategy
How to commuicate
- Communication process / plan How does everyone get informed about the things they need to know? Sick people / On holiday?
Why meetings are bad
– FROM NEWSLETTERS
- Every meeting must have value for everyone attending
From nl-84: “Every meeting needs to be structured in a way that there is something in it for everyone. Or else they won’t come.” You consistently argue that if developers don’t attend meetings, it’s because those meetings only benefit the manager, not the attendees.
- Context switching from meetings kills developer productivity
From nl-23: “Cluster all meetings that are necessary and prevent all other meetings.” You repeatedly emphasize that developers need long stretches of uninterrupted time, and scattered meetings with 1-hour gaps destroy productivity by causing 9+ minutes of context switching overhead each time.
- Status meetings are productivity drains
From nl-63: “Too many managers insist on push. They want status meetings, they want email status reports. Then they have no time left for their work.” You consistently advocate against status meetings, calling them time wasters that serve manager insecurity rather than actual work needs.
- Decision meetings can be valuable, but most meetings are not
From nl-38: “There are good meetings and bad meetings. I still think the right meetings - about decisions - can speed up things. While status and talk meetings - urgh.” You distinguish between productive decision-making meetings and wasteful status/talking meetings.
- Default response to meeting invites should be “no”
From nl-54: “The most important thing we did was to change the default answer for a meeting invite from being a ‘yes’ to a ’no’. This had a massive boost on productivity. The average time people spent in meetings went down by a third.” You advocate for making “no” the default response to protect everyone’s time.
- Silent meetings can make meetings more effective
From nl-12: “Silent meetings, who would have known! At least this is an interesting idea. We will try out many more things when we want remote to get working, this might be one of them.” You’ve promoted the Silent Meeting Manifesto as a way to make meetings “suck a little less.”
- Never attend meetings without an agenda
From nl-92: “And yes, don’t go to meetings without an agenda. Neither should your reports.” You consistently emphasize that meetings without agendas are a waste of time and should be avoided entirely.
- Standup meetings should focus on alignment, not status
From nl-23: “I’m a huge fan of daily standups… But I do agree that most standups are done wrong. Some ideas to make them better. Focus on alignment, not status.” You distinguish between effective standups that create alignment versus wasteful status reporting.
- Meeting-free Wednesdays are an effective productivity boost
From nl-38: “I do think it’s a little extreme to cancel all meetings, better err on that side. ‘while re-upping a rule that no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays’ is easy to get you started.” You advocate for protected time blocks free from meetings.
- Meetings become “accountability sinks” when everyone is invited
From nl-96 and nl-114: “Also meeting where everyone and the kitchen sink (ha!) was invited to. I once set a day in meetings next to the same person. Ad-hoc accountability sinks.” You warn against inviting too many people to meetings as a way to diffuse responsibility and avoid accountability.
