Avoiding unnecessary meetings or for the hundredth time about meetings

Do you know anyone who would like to attend meetings more often? I would like to say that I do not know such people, but unfortunately this is not the case. Usually they are middle or top managers who want to fill their entire working day with imaginary management actions, regardless of whether they are justified or not.

A meeting is a way to gather all the necessary people and give them the opportunity to communicate directly. And this is a great tool if meetings are rare and really necessary.

The meeting makes you quit all your business and switch to something else. Are you sure that the one-hour meeting for which you pick up 8 people, usually well-paid people, is worth a whole day for one employee? Are meetings often worth it?

Meetings should be held only for the purpose of making decisions on a situation known in advance, but not to identify the problem. I often repeat this to my colleagues, but not everyone wants to listen and hear me. I am often offered to hold a meeting, and in addition to an incomprehensible name in the calendar, they do not indicate why we will meet. Usually, I reject such meetings and offer to set out the essence of the matter in a letter or in the agenda of the meeting. I say “usually” because there are situations when everything is on fire and there is no time for summons to the meeting.
')
Politely refusing a meeting can be something like this: “In order for everyone to prepare for the meeting, could you briefly summarize in the letter the questions and problems that we have to solve? Thanks in advance! ”In most cases, the meeting turns out to be optional, and issues can be resolved by mail without attracting a large number of people. Teach others to do so.

If the meeting is mandatory and take place with any options, suggest reducing its duration. Do not be afraid of meetings lasting 20-30 minutes - with the motivation to solve all working questions you do not need a whole hour. Meetings lasting 1 hour or more should be a luxury for you. I propose to simply calculate the costs.

• Let 8 people be present at the meeting: top and middle managers, leading developers
• The average salary of those present: 120,000 rubles per month.
• It means that 1 hour of one person costs 750 rubles (in fact, more, taking into account taxes).
• One such assembly will cost you at least 6,000 rubles + lost profits if the developers instead of the assembly wrote the code (and this is even more).

You can also explicitly make the argument that if a developer is invited to a meeting, such significant functionality will not be ready in time. When you translate meetings into real money and features, the situation begins to sober those around you.

Try to bring to the meeting only the really necessary people, do not drag all the developers who participated in the project. It’s wiser in this situation to find out everything from the developers and not to involve them in the meeting - this pulls them out of the workflow. In the most extreme case, you can always call them and ask "thin" questions during the meeting.

Elements of a healthy workshop:

• there should be a clear agenda for the meeting: the purpose of the meeting and the time;
• everyone should prepare for the meeting in advance;
• if someone is not prepared for the meeting, then such a meeting should be postponed;
• each participant must have their own role: moderator and participants;
• the moderator ensures that other participants do not leave the topic;
• all meeting participants are required to follow the moderator (especially for managers);
• as a result of the meeting, decisions must be made that must be included in the minutes.

But this is all theory, and practice is significantly different. Further examples of meetings from real life, which are difficult to refuse.

The big boss calls for a meeting to "talk"
Naturally, the letter has nothing but the subject. On the question of an explanation, why this meeting is necessary, that there is no need to collect a bunch of people and we will answer you by mail, you get a big plug. As a result, at the meeting the issue is resolved in 5 minutes, but its remaining 55 minutes are discussed, until the meeting is formally over.

The big boss again sends an invitation in the style of "without anything." This time you unfold your answer with money counts and lost profits. If even here they give you a stick, it means that there is hardly anything to change. Either for the boss such losses of money for the sake of chatter are considered normal, or it is not adequate (suggest your options in the comments). Here he decides how to act, to put up with or not to put up with such a leader.

Periodical meeting to clarify problems, new tasks, statuses, etc.
Imagine, in the calendar for the year ahead, a periodic meeting is held, at which, for example, new tasks from external departments are discussed. Guided by common sense, before each such meeting you are asked to provide a list of these new tasks for discussion in order to be better prepared. However, the answer is not always get. Then there is an attempt to cancel the meeting, for which sometimes you get a reprimand like: the sales department cannot always write an agenda for the meeting, they are creative people and are constantly on business trips. But why should I spend my time on them?

Reporting periodic meeting for external customer
This is a kind of symbiosis of the first two points. Often occurs in companies that work on outsourcing. Fortunately, did not work according to this scheme.

In the comments, please tell us about your experience with meeting deviations. How often can not walk? What meetings can not be abandoned, and why?