Meetings

Meetings are dreaded and ubiquitous, however they are essential for Coordinating Groups. They serve as a way of Meetings convey culture.

Meeting Prep

• What outcome do I want?
• What obstacles might I encounter in this meeting?
• How can I overcome those obstacles?¹

Types of meetings²

• Information sharing and Q&A
• Decision Making
• Achieving Alignment
• Discuss ideas and feedback, i.e. “brain storming”

Process

Meta

Schedule hygiene is important part of avoiding burn out and Zoom fatigue. While a company wide Meeting Purge may be though to implement, you can at least do regular audits of your reoccurring meetings and opt-out of those that are no longer relevant to you.

You can add this rule to your culture:

Rule You can cancel a meeting if you can live with the

outcome.

The idea here is that often meeting attendance is perfunctory, and thinking hard about whether you can live with canceling a meeting can help you reduce unnecessary meetings³.

Do not schedule in the standard increments of 00 or 30. Scheduling 05 or 35 gives you time to context switch and prepare for the meeting. Also do not feel wedded to the increment of 30 mins or 60 mins. If you schedule the meeting for 45 minutes or 20 minutes, will the outcome change⁴?

• Chatham House Rule

Before the meeting

Decide if this needs to be a meeting at all, consider written forms of communication. Perhaps documentation first as it will serve a wider audience, email where nuance is key, chat where speed is key. Use the POST framework to develop a meaningful agenda.

1. Post Framework

   For each calendar invite outline the following⁵: Purpose Outcome Structure Timing

2. Timing

   Consider starting on the :05 and :35 to give time for others to switch from their previous meeting. Consider keeping your timing under a half hour / hour².

3. Pre-reads

   Send any pre-reads 24 hours before the meetings

   1. TODO my process on pre-reads

During the meeting

The leader should introduce the topic/goal, along with giving time for introducing unknown participants

1. Note taking

   • Key ideas, Action items

2. In-person meetings

   If not Zoom, be careful about the fact that Whiteboards bias towards the drawer.

Post meeting

• Send out summary of points from the agenda, action items, and additional ideas

1. Shreyas Doshi. How to incorporate meeting prep into your daily work routine. (2023).

2. Yeung, A. How to run a meeting. (2021).

3. Grunwald, A. Cancel your meetings if you can live with the outcome. (2023).

4. Turner, J. Back-To-Back Meetings Create an Illusion of Productivity — Why The Best Leaders Keep an Empty…. ILLUMINATION (2022).

5. Sharma, N. POST tweet. (2022).