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Meetings are Bad For You
19061969 writes "Though this is obvious to most of us, your PHB's might benefit from knowing that meetings are bad for you. Two psychologists have found evidence that the number of and the time spent in meetings has a detrimental effect on mood. "...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found", write the authors after conducting a diary study. Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Memo from your PHB
We need to have a meeting to discuss these findings!
Oh no... it's the future.
Let's meet and discuss some action items to deal with that.
Bollocks. Meeting are held for a reason - and usually an important one to which mood can step back for. The submission title presents meetings as bad overall, while the article says -too many- meetings are bad. elynnia
In other news, the sky is blue.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
"Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Perhaps not. Most meetings are scheduled by said moody bosses because they can't be bothered to read their email or meet one on one with the people who are actually getting work done. Sure, they're busy otherwise, but most of the reason they're busy is because of this meeting culture that equates sitting around a table talking about what you're going to have your minions do (as soon as they get out of the meetings you force them into) with getting code written and products shipped.
The main reason I hate meetings so much is because I get the impression that the only people getting anything out of them are the ones contributing nothing useful to the project in the first place. I don't care if your job is to sit between me and your boss, if you can't keep up with a project you're a part of without dragging me away from my actual work to hand-hold you through what's going on twice a week, you're wasting my time.
That was 90% of the meetings last place I worked, and this accounted for probably half the reason I got fed up with the place and quit before Christmas. Maybe I'm just not cut out to work somewhere that has more than a few employees, and I've never claimed to be a people person, but everybody I talked to felt much the same way, so I feel at least somewhat validated.
Face to face contact is great, but the instances where that face to face contact's value outweighs the cost of herding a bunch of people into a conference room for a chit chat are few and far between when there are deadlines to meet, IMHO.
Game... blouses.
"...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found"
OK then. To counter that, bosses should never assign work, or require work be done for a meeting. Make it more like, "Yo dude, what's up?" "Cool." "See Ya."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Great, now I can probably expect to get invited to a series of meetings to discuss the detrimental effects of attending meetings......
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
...that meetings gear you up for work that needs to be done, perhaps its just the company i work for but, i enjoy my meetings. Make me all exciteable. Perhaps i just need to work in the industry for a bit longer.
I'm not sure I understand the findings. I know I'm always pleased when my boss "delegates" his full workload to me at a meeting.
This guy's the limit!
it is reported that baning your head against the wall is bad for you.
Smile, it confuses people
Their central insight, they say, is the concept of "the meeting as one more type of hassle or interruption that can occur for individuals".
that's their central insight? is this news to anyone?
"Meetings are Bad For You" .. having an informal conversation with someone from a marketing Department for 5 minutes is bad enough.
No shit
Having to sit with them for an Hour as they drivel total Bullshit, is enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Am I the only one that found this whole statement funny? I would think that they would release the paper to trade magazines and such to get their findings out, rather than waste time with meetings about how meetings are bad. That sounds like shooting yourself in the foot to me.
While number of meetings is important, I think that spending all day, every day in your office with no idea what anyone else is doing could be just as detrimental. I go to like 3 meetings a month so it takes me forever to find out what other people are doing.
...
I worked at a remote office for my previous employer. One time they flew me into their corporate headquarters to participate in a software replacement plan. I spent the better part of each day going from meeting to meeting. At the end of the last day I asked one of the people escorting me around "With all of these meetings how do y'all get any work done?" He looked at me seriously and said, "That's the idea." I went back to my remote world with even less respect for CHQ...
Something needs to be done about meetings... Perhaps more laws, counselling, medication... for the children.
I suggest you read Slashdot
As someone who doesn't work in a buisness environment, I'm curious to what goes on meetings and what exaclty causes so much stress in them. Anyone care to bring me up to speed?
Considering the cash blown on the .com boom you'd hope a lesson or two would have stuck.
__Funny adult videos daily
You need a balance of meetings.
Key is to not invite non-Stakeholders. Certain meetings are needed for people to feel empowered to produce and cetrain meetings just make people wither on the vine. What you want to accomplish at the meeting?
A friend of mine told me once how badly their office was run.
The biggest problem, in his opinion, was the number of meetings that they had in order to discuss the projects they were working on. Frustration built up among employees due to not having enough time to actually do the work, as well as the number of times that he was interrupted in the middle of doing something productive - simply to go to another pointless meeting.
In his opinion, these meetings caused just as many problems as they tried to solve, and ironically, they would sometimes generate more meetings to discuss how far they were along in meeting their original deadlines.
I would tell you more about it, but I have a meeting to attend.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I read in Reader's Digest many years ago about a plant manager who loathed meetings. A worker was injured on the job, which prompted a series of long "safety meetings." This propmpted the manager to post signs throughout the plant that read:
Work Safely! Accidents cause Meetings!
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Really, saying 'meetings are bad for you' is just a way for psychology to have influence over business management.
.. thats definitely bad for you.
..
Whats bad for you is over-psychologizing about all sorts of things
Meetings are good for people who have to work together and coordinate things together, and good meetings result in happy, productive people. Its quite possible to have bad, cheesy, Office-Space style meetings that go nowhere, but its equally possible to have effective management of meetings so that in fact, work gets done.
If all you do is sit around in the meeting room, psychologizing about things, then you'll definitely come out crapped out. Get work done, communicate effectively, use meetings as a proper tool. Then you'll feel good
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Maybe an employer who schedules a burdensome number of meetings is also likely to encourage a workplace that increases employees' fatigue. I don't see any proof of causation here.
"Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
who calls for meeting in the first place.
I remember reading that meetings are an ideal way to get some things done:
1)Pool expertise from different departments
2)"Gather" authority for cross-department tasks
3)Get feedback and progress reports from different departments
4)Discuss critical issues that require human interaction
5)Criticise new products and techniques from different points of view
6)Brainstorm
When used properly, meetings can be powerful tools... But the ONLY reason I see meetings being used anymore is POLITICS! To palm off responsibility, blame someone else, avoid work, act important, establish power ("I called a meeting because I can"), or just generally be a waste of organizational oxygen. No wonder people hate them... The last thing most techs and researchers want is to get mired in office politics.
A meeting conducted properly is a huge help. It can speed up things and make your goals and objectives a whole lot clearer than they ever were, but unfortunately some people just don't seem to get that.
StrayByte.Net
I'm the sole IT support for a manufacturing company. I meet once a week with the managers and key staff in order to update them on the projects that I have running as well as to assign tasks that need to be done. It's certainly feasible to meet with each one on their own and convey what I need done, but that would take quite longer than a 45 minute meeting. Not all meetings are pointless wastes of time. Maybe it's just the way that your company runs them.
They give you more time to sleep in.
In most meetings at least one person is dozing off a bit.
The problem isn't meetings, it is too many meetings to the extent that the time taken to do the job is occupied by meetings so there is no time to do the work in hand.
I use to have this at my old job that was posted. Some of the high-ups were not impressed.
Are you Lonely ?
Don't like working on your own ? Hate Making Decisions ?
Then Call a Meeting !!!!
YOU CAN...
SEE people
DRAW Flowcharts
FEEL Important
IMPRESS your collegues
FORM subcommittees
MAKE meaningless recommendations
All on Company Time
MEETINGS
The pratical alternative to work.
I know that most people here work on the "create the product" part of industry, or so it seems, but when you're like me, meetings are a wonderful thing.
I work in sales. The more that I can understand our products, the better of a salesman I can be. I"m not the type of person that will try to make up things because they want products to look good -- instead, I try to be as knowledgeable as I can, because from what I have seen, the more knowledgeable that the buyer sees that I am, the more trusting they are of me, and therefore more willing to buy what I am selling.
I don't spend a large amount of my time in meetings, but at least for me, the meetings that I am a part of, each bit of information that I receive on a product ends up selling at least another few units, so they're great for me.
ArtificialNews.com will one day SAVE YOUR LIFE from evil AI!
I like fast meetings:
"I gots this"
"This thing sucks, and I did this -- how 'bout you?"
"Oh, I did this thing, and broke the build."
"Ah-ha, you get the chicken!"
Meetings should be over before your coffee gets cold. More time for work = more productive. People typing in meetings shouldn't be there.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
There is something disturbing about this paragraph from the article:
Rogelberg has delivered this insight in a talk called "Meetings and More Meetings," which he presented to a meeting at the University of Sheffield. He also does a talk called "Not Another Meeting!", which has been well received at two meetings in North Carolina.
Can it be true? Can medication be a meeting alternative?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
TFA goes into this; in a nutshell - if you perceive a meeting as an interuption then it will stress you out because you are being forced to do something other than your [perceived] day-job.
I'm sure it would be as bad at the other extreme - if you never met anyone, hwo well would you do your job then?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Best manager I've worked for hated meetings, when a meeting was unavoidable he made us stand up during the meetings. The effect on the meeting was amazing, people got very snappy during the meeting, only discussing the core problem and was well prepared when they arrived at the meeting, since no one was thrilled of a 4 hour stand up meeting :)
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
In my old job, the project was split between a Colorado Springs and Gaithersburg, MD location. The big shots were located on the East Coast in G-burg. There was one particular meeting that I had to attend every two weeks. I was Assistant Lab Manager. The meeting was a video conference hosted by G-burg. It was suppose to be a simple status meeting. A few years back when the meeting started, it was simple and short until the Sr. Mgt got involved. Today, the meetings last as long as 5 hours and one thing I notice, it is usually the same few people who just go on and on.
These "windbags" think they can impress the higher ups by spewing so mush B.S. My part takes about a minute and then I am out of there ! There are many times I sit listening to these windbags and I would like to say, "get to the point and be done !"
Also in that group, it seems like they liked to have late Friday afternoon meetings which I of course, ignored, unfortunately to my detriment.
on second thoughts, could YOU be bad for the meeting? hmmn? maybe? in Soviet Russia?
... but as a paid-up marketroid who goes to far too many meetings, I wrote a little guide: How to do meetings Hope it raises a smile (or grimace) - damn, got to go to a meeting now
To play the devil's advocate, I think meetings are a cost to an organization, and with all things with a cost need to be considered carefully. However, I have found, from both sides of the fence, that small team meetings to go over what other folks are doing on the team to be helpful. I've been working in product development for some time and the 30-45 minutes spent almost always reveals something of use to other team members. Also, it makes the team stronger sitting together and talking once a week. You just can't get all the information on what is going on from an e-mail or an updated percentage on a line item. Also, knowing there is a looming meeting where you face your peers is motivational, despite what some may say (or you just don't care, in which case I would generally not be interested in just not having you around ;-)
One helpful trick I've used is to bring something sweet to meetings and place them on the table. Sugar cancels most negative feelings. Also, let the team BS for about 5 to 10 minutes in the beginning of the meeting. A bit of a "gathering atmosphere" is also helpful and further helps build team unity.
The article is poking fun at the study. The author of the article is the organiser of the Ignoble Prize competition.
What's happening? Ahhh, we have a sort of a problem here. Yeah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your T.P.S. report. It's just that we're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports *before* they go out now. So if you could just remember to do that from now on, that'd be great.
there is only one thing worse than being included in meetings...
and that is not being included in meetings.
when I have meetings with my phd supervisors I usually enjoy them a lot. if you're discussing something with funny, intelligent experts who help you get things done it's not surprising it's enjoying.
so don't blame meetings. I expect most meetings are bad for you just because most *people* are stupid, boring, selfish, ignorant, incompetent and more likely to get in your way than not.
"Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com) and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize"
(emphasis added by me)
ie, to all the people complaining: this is supposed to be flaming obvious.
Cheers,
Ian
Most of the meetings I've had to attend could have been performed via IM and/or email exchange.
This whole face time thing is ridiculous. We've got technologies to handle that these days.
When I was a director of an I.T. I had two meetings I had to attend per month. One was a weekly meet with my unit for status updates, the other the weekly senior staff meeting. Then once a month I had the technical advisory meeting which I actually blew off a couple times because the office came first.
Otherwise everthing was handled via email or 1:1 in person or by phone. A meeting by definition is a committee and we all know the best way to doom and idea is to put it before a committee.
At one of my former jobs, fully half of each meeting was dedicated to other meetings. We'd spend about 15 minutes recapping the last meeting, and another 30 setting the agenda for the next one! I think it may just be for the reason you cited - even though the higher-ups in the meetings were 'constantly in touch with each other', they never really seemed to know what anyone else was doing or if any progress had been made. The net result was that I was pulled away from my work for twice as long as should have been necessary and got less accomplished than should have been possible.
Then again, I was working for the state...
And the UN, for that matter.
After all, their entire job is nothing but meetings.
"And yes, before you ask, I am aware of the irony of appearing on television in order to decry it."
We often hear about the 5 W's in school--perhaps those planning meetings could focus a little more on the Who and Why, as opposed to the What, Where, and When?
Oh, we were talking about corporate meetings. Never mind.
P.S. - instead of being fired, my coworker was moved to another project, working with newer technology and not having to deal wiith daily production issues. Talk about sending a message to the rest of the staff!
Academics in psychology seem to have run out of meaningful topics to pursue, so are concentrating on trivia now. I get particularly annoyed at how they are converting outliers of human behavior into diseases these days- e.g. shyness, energetic kids, etc.
At this meeting was a very old and experienced PhD who knew everything about the project. He regarded the meeting as an opportunity to display his knowledge at length, but had nothing of substance to put forward; after all, it was his design decisions that had caused the mess in the first place. Did I mention he was now a contractor and paid by the hour?
I know nothing about the branch of engineering concerned but I did go and ask the technicians what they thought. They knew the answer perfectly well - the material of a major tubular component was completely underspecified and was leaking gas when the plant got hot. But the PhD refused to accept it.
We didn't exactly draw straws for who would bring it up - but suffice it to say that I ended up with the short one. The result was an hour or so of listening to the worst metallurgical bullshit I have ever endured. But in the end we got our way, the components were replaced, the system started to work, the PhD was let go, (and a year later I was the engineering manager - it seems the MD had been reading the minutes).
Proof if proof were needed that the real reason for meetings is to drive the engineers to the point at which they will risk their jobs and their credibility to find a solution that means they don't have to go to any more meetings.
Pining for the fjords
Also in that group, it seems like they liked to have late Friday afternoon meetings which I of course, ignored, unfortunately to my detriment.
I worked in a group - developing marketing software for MCI back in the mid-1990's. Our manager decided to order 4 pm meetings everyday especially on Friday. These meetings lasted until 6 or 7 every night. He of course did not show up, his staff people ran the meetings. After attending a few of those meetings, I came to the conclusion they were a waste of time. I quit going to them.
In another place I worked at, we have flex time and I took Friday afternoons off every week. I usually leave by 11 am. One time, an e-mail went out on Thursday afternoon and it mentioned that one of the corporate executives was going to visit. The meeting was scheduled for 3 pm on Friday. On top of that, we have casual Friday. We were told to "dress to impress". I blew off the meeting since I had other plans. The following week, I was called in to my manager's office and read the "riot act" for ignoring the meeting. He mentioned that we must show utmost respect to our executives and attending this meeting was important to this executive. Quite a few people were not at this meeting. It was a waste of time as mentioned by those who attended. It was basically the executive telling about all the good things he was doing for the rank and file workers.
I've got a productive relationship with peers/partners/co-workers (and even some big-ticket customers) that, despite years of working together, I have never met in person. We make excellent use of (get this!) the telephone. I know, it's quaint.
But the most important thing is that we keep those calls short, and don't need to use them to convey basic information to each other because we do that all the time using e-mail, IM, and a rich portally-intranet-ish web presence.
But the only thing that really makes those supporting technologies a viable replacement for endless facetime is decent communications skills. Being able to cogently write what's on your mind, provide a usable spreadsheet or document that illuminates the matter at hand... even being able to use IM without it decaying into a meandering social tarpit.. those things require a little bit of practice and discipline. But they buy you productive, asynchronous communication that liberates you to work on your actual job on your own schedule.
In-person meetings are saved for when it really matters: gaining and keeping paying customers. Oh, and free food.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Rogelberg has delivered this insight in a talk called "Meetings and More Meetings," which he presented to a meeting at the University of Sheffield. He also does a talk called "Not Another Meeting!", which has been well received at two meetings in North Carolina.
Oh, the irony...
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
The instant the topics start to repeat themselves, I (loudly) move to adjourn.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
When I worked at Atari, those of use who worked on Gameboy Advance titles could keep on working during a meeting as long as we could nod our heads and look interested at the right moments. Everyone else who didn't work on a Gameboy Advance title had to leave their joysticks outside and try not to look too bored.
Everytime I go to a meeting I get paid to procrastinate. It's very relaxing.
1. Changing paradygms.
2. Drinking the kool aid at a meeting where business developers are present.
3. Falling for the "everyone please send HR a fresh copy of your resume to update your files" ploy
4. Trying to calm down a frantic coworker that is freaking out for a very minuscule thing without at least some caffeine courage.
5. Drinking the last cup in the coffee urn. I can promise you this: it will taste like boiled crap.
6. Eating that last donut from the meeting 3 days ago. The Krisky Kreme box has not moved from the coffee pot table and that one donut looks tempting as hell, but trust me: you don't want it.
7. Come-to-Jesus meetings for a project that is not yours.
8. Any brainstorming meeting involving your newly hired business developer, especially since you don't have a formal "business development" function.
9. Trying to explain to a frantic coworker that mail.app is not crazy and it is not ignoring rules.
10. Trying to explain the same coworker that classifying mail as "ham" helps the filter learn what makes a good email and avoids false positives.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I work in the IT field (obviously) but I work freelance. Basically, I choose who I work for, so I don't get stuck working under/alongside/above people that I don't personally like. I naturally veer away from meetings. Most meetings I've ever had were a waste of time and they were paying me a phenomenal amount of money to sit and talk, or sometimes even just sit. I don't doubt that meetings can be useful, quite often I've been keen to be involved in ones that affected me directly but been refused (yes, I've actually been politically blocked from attending a meeting with a supplier that would affect my work directly and drastically as I would be in charge of running and maintaining whatever they supplied!).
I've had three hour meetings where the only conclusion and main focus of the chat was what colour green to place on a website background (the website, incidentally, never got off the ground). And they paid me for that time. Now, I don't mind doing stuff that people are paying me for so long as it's something that I can do (I wouldn't say I could fix something if I couldn't), however I try to avoid all meetings now with those same people because it degenerates into a waste of five or more people's time, money and effort, distracts them from the real work and doesn't actually achieve anything we couldn't do with a poll on a webpage. I could make money from sitting in a room and gabbing nonsense but I consider it a real waste of my own time and talent.
One of the reasons that I won't work 9-5, mon-fri, for someone I don't like is that I can call things what they are if people ask. I've never sucked up to a boss in my life because I've never had one. I've had clients, whom I visit initially to determine their needs and then work for, but I avoid "meetings" at all costs.
Meetings are generally without any sort of focus, any conclusions, any change of opinions. They usually are either explaining things that people don't need to understand ("the network is broke, we're fixing it, it'll take a day and cost us X amount of money" is a perfectly good explanation for someone who's not technically minded), letting people spread responsibility for difficult decisions (or even just a comfort blanket for those same decision-makers) and attempts at micro-managing things that those people just don't understand.
If you have a group of colleagues who are all working on very intertwined things, they will form their own meeting either 1-1 or in small groups. They'll have to, and they'll do it a damn sight better than you organising a meeting for them all to check up with you. If you are managing people whose job you could not do yourself, stay out of their way. Maybe find them once a month or so, just to check that everything's working and that you're aware of any major problems. You hire people into a job to do that job, not to make them spend hours in a meeting explaining things they learned twenty years ago to you because you know nothing about that area.
I find that nonsensical meetings only come about through management. Managed-meetings are rarely productive. Having said that, there is a difference between a meeting and a chat. Chat to your staff, make sure they are okay, make sure things are on track, congratulate them on a job well done but bow to their expertise. If you invite someone to a meeting, it's because they absolutely HAVE to be there. If you are having a meeting with a IT vendor and you couldn't tell the difference between two products without the salesman's help, you need your IT guy there, to tell you and the vendor exactly what you want and don't want. But then, why are you there in the first place if you don't know what you're buying?
Meetings can be so useful in the right hands, but 99% of the really important decisions are made or can be made when those self-same people pass each other in the corridor, or pop into each other's office/cubicle/cupboard to chat. That way, there's also no problem with disturbing each other from important work (they won't chat
Is a meeting where the same topic is rehashed over and over. There are a lot of people who think it is necessary to explain things ad nauseum in as many different ways as they can. I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it if there were a way to opt out once you get the point. This is one of the main sources of frustration at many of my meetings.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Two psychologists have found evidence that the number of and the time spent in meetings has a detrimental effect on mood. "...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found"
And the number of Prirates in the world is inversely related to the rate of global warming. Honestly, people who are in more meetings usually have to balance multiple projects for multiple people. Multiple projects means more work, and more stress, whether you are in meetings or not.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I'd take meetings anytime over troubleshooting in a freezing data center!
w00t
Rambling unfocused meetings are a complete waste of everbody's time. If you have a competent chair, then you may get some useful results. If you attend too many of the former type, find out when the phb's birthday is and anonymously get him a copy of "Meetings Bloody Meetings", a training video starring John Cleese. Gotta go now, teleconference time. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
My last job (that I quit in frustration) was very much like that.
We used to have meetings. All the time, even to the point where our projects would run late because of the damn meetings.
Our PHB's solution?
Mandatory overtime for the entire department. And - the punch line - an additional meeting every morning for status reports.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Meetings = Bad.
Wasting time posting to Slashdot to complain about meetings = Good.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
We use stand-up meetings in my workgroup every morning. The meetings are useful because it starts the day with everyone on the same page. By standing up, we discourage long-winded discussions and get to the point faster.
It works for us.
Next meeting you have try out the Meeting Cost Calculator http://w3.wmcnet.org/meetingcalc/
There is a difference between what is claimed in the subject Meetings are Bad For You and what is claimed in the article ... having too many meetings and spending too much time in meetings per day may have negative effects...
A well lead meeting, kept short and on the subject, can be extremely effective. These do not have to be meetings where you book a meetingroom and order sanwiches. This can be a standup-meeting at the coffeemachine for 5-10 minutes in the morning as well. It can be sitting together around one desk, comparing notes. It can be two people calling in a third one by one to handle things and thus not taking up the time of the other people that are NOT needed for sayd problem/discussion/whatever.
As strange as it sounds to some here, this will have a much better impact then sending a umpteenth email with ALERT! as subject and marked as high priority.
Some people do actually pay more attention to what others have to say, even if that person is saying exactly word for word what has been mailed to them.
As strange as it sounds, that is a given. This does not take away that meeting to schedule future meetings, so a dicussion can be held on a workgroup to form a thinktank to make a comite are good. At best they then become the equivalent of the watercooler gossip on management level (and they drink perrier).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The meetings will continue until we discover why no work is getting done around here! Am I clear!
-The Boss
the "Bobs"
At one previous job, we were required to have weekly staff meetings. So we did. At 4:30 on Fridays, at the nearest bar. I recommend it. There's nothing like a few beers to make a meeting go by a little easier.
Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? What about those long and boring conference calls? Bullshit Bingo is a way to change all of that!
http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/bullshit/
Open Source Alternatives
At the company I just left, sometimes we would lose half our work week in pointless meetings. So if I knew we were going to have a long meeting, I'd bring in a bunch of printouts and scatter them around in front of me. And bring a notepad and scribble until someone asked me a question.
But I wasn't coding. I'm a hobbyist woodworker, and I would be making plans for stuff I'd want to do at home later on that day.
The way I see it, it's kind of like running SETI @ home, but for your brain not your PC. They're keeping me sitting there, effectively useless. So don't let those spare cycles go to waste!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I for one would like to call a meeting to discuss how to welcome our new overlords.
Since this was done at universities, we probably paid for that study. You can pay me and I can tell you that I have wasted a large part of my career sitting in useless, boring meetings. One job I had to spend a half day a week in a "team building" meeting. That was a total waste of productivity.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Reading through these answers make it so very clear why meetings are a bad experience. So many meet up with a negative attitude and expectations. I can see a room full of crossed arms and feel the pain in my stomach of knowing what it takes to get past that wall to make a change. What is a meeting, anyway. I see that many wants to get out of the meeting to get some work done. So meetings are when two or more people are talkining together at work, but not doing work? How do you know what your work is if you don't talk to other people about it? How does your software get sold if you don't have a good discussion with marketing on what can be sold? I read somewhere that management is getting results through other people. That requires that I talk to people. I saw email suggested as a better way. My experience: I've never seen a better way to covardly hiding from colleages than e-mail, I never seen a better way to create massive conflicts than through multiple misunderstandings of intensions through email. The resistance of change is immense in any organisation. Chance is the daily challenge and battle of management. Always necessary, never popular. Why change? Because companies that doesn't change fall behind! So you want to get back to work? Put a lot of ours in your assignments, making progress? Towards what? How does your work contribute to the success of your company? Do you know? Do you think you know? How do they see it in sales, accounting, marketing, the call center? Everyone else is just like you, but with a very different perspective on the world. And everyone is right, though you disagree. How do you find out what to do: YOU TALK TOGETHER! That can easily end up in a meeting! You want to get rid of dreadfull meetings? So do I? Here is a simple way to do it. Go to the meeting anticipating something good. Make an active contribution to make it good. Help make meetings efficient, productive, possitive. Learn to handle conflicts appearing in a meeting. You know, you are just like the jerk you are sitting in front of: both want to do good and do it of a good heart. So why is he a jerk? Why are you disagreeing. Well, try and find out! Ask good questions - don't judge! Be curious! I could go on...
The best meetings I've ever attended were held every Monday morning by a Managing Director - a fairly nasty piece of work himself, but the rules were: the meeting cannot last more than 15 minutes, nobody sits down, any decision must be accompanied by a Next Step, a Timeline, and a Person Responsible. Excellent principles. Pity it was a management consultancy and the actual work would have been just as useful if we'd all stayed in bed and watched Captain Kangaroo...
Science fiction for grown-ups...
In the last seven days I had to attend 17 meetings/calls. And they wonder why I get real bitchy at the end of a long day when one call goes from 09:00 to 17:00. I am also expected to keep my projects on schedule too.
Panic now, beat the rush!
Thanks! I am surprised that this was not noticed by the other commenters who seem to have taken it too seriously. I don't know if this piece appeared in some designated location in the newspaper meant for humor. I remember the same newspaper (Guardian) published a piece about a year ago advocating 'taking out' the President of a country, and it caused a lot of hue and cry, which lasted until someone pointed out that the article appeared in a page meant for humor/sarcasm. This article on meetings did have a cue at the top ('Improbable Research'), and yet, it looks like it wasn't all that effective.
one meeting that was bad for me, the memo was something like...
To: YOU
From: Balmer, Steve
CEO
Subj: Google
We need to have a meeting about regarding you and some rumors I've been hearing. Please report to conf. room 210 a 3:30. The new one by my office with all the chairs.
Than this
It said:
Having your manager review your presentation is bad.
Invariably, they will have recommendations to make. You could have spent your every waking moment working on this presentation, but that doesn't matter. They'll want to change a word here, make this boldface over here, change this color here, make this a line chart instead of a bar graph. They will want things changed. They'll want you to add tons of things which turn a simple presentation into something more like a narrative, a paper, or a book---something that someone could read without you even presenting it. Often, this has little actual affect on what's really being delivered by the presentation.
And, invariably, they'll want to review those changes again. And, of course, you see this coming, they'll want to change things again. Sometimes they'll even change things back to the way you originally had it. This process of change, review, change, review happens continuously up until the meeting is actually given.
What this has taught me is that it's best to hold your presentation materials until the day before the meeting, if possible, because it will dramatically reduce the amount of time allowed for the reviewer(s). Remember: The reviewer(s) are often people that have no real ability (or need) to contribute to the project that you're working on. These people exist solely to facilitate (i.e., add overhead). The less time you give them to review, the less time you'll be forced to make meaningless changes.
The most recent presentation I gave was reviewed by at least 50% of the group to whom I was presenting, including the two VPs (presumably the people who most needed to see the presentation). They all made recommendations. So, what's the point of me giving it exactly?
(Sigh.) I guess I'm feeling a bit demotivated today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_Improbable_ Research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
I've often thought that many of these useless meetings would vanish if the perpetrator had to provide the attendees with a charge number. You want to waste several hours of my time? Fine, give me a charge number, instead of dumping the cost on our real customers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Am I the only one who noticed that the article was written by: Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research (www.improbable.com), and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize. Some of the other articles linked on the left are suspicious as well. I agree with the conclusions of the article, but I question the research.
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. -- Sir Winston Churchill
Have someone page you 15 minutes after the meeting starts. You can leave if it is boring. This even works if it is YOUR meeting.
Avoid inviting the Devil's Advocate to your meeting. You know. The one who says "I feel strongly about X but I also see how Not X would work as well." He's a time waster and a rambling felcher.
Agree to use Tabling. Table a long discussion until the end of the meeting. Leave before the end of the meeting.
Mention the meeting will be primarily "detailed and technical". That will shake off the posers who know that "very technical" meetings are rarely attended by people who matter.
Drop a nuke. If you have a lot of "campers" (people who attend meetings to have a project to put in their portfolio), mention the project could be late. They'll leave like the room is on fire. You can also run off the "bullwinkles" (managers with no reports) who are looking to justify their existence by assigning technical work to them.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I got to meetings regularly and ... well these "scientific" findings arent really scientific per say.
It only boils down to popular culture regarding meetings. Through comic strip in newspaper, radio ads, tv ads we're constantly reminded that meetings are boring and stressful.
So obviously with such a point of view on meetings, you're negative before even entering the room, there's no way you're gonna think that meetings are useful and creative this way.
Meetings are extraordinary tools to get a global idea of what your team thinks on a given topic. Maybe that meeting is to talk design for your website. Maybe it will be to analyze why the company lost money this year. Whatever is your goal, meetings are a great way to get everyone's point of view on the topic.
Maybe we've just become too individualist to think that the input of others can be helpful, making us think that meetings are a loss of time since they just "dont understand" what you're saying.
I heard once from a man I think highly of that there is no such thing as a bad or good situation. It always depends on you position yourself around it. Meaning that for *any* situation, you can *choose* to view it as a bad thing or a good thing.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
By a strange co-incidence we invented the solution to excess meetings today.
1. Total the cost of the meeting in man hours.
2. Multiply by the company's charging rate for engineer time.
3. Have an anonymous ballot at the end of the meeting as to whether it was productive.
4. If the conclusion is that it wasn't productive, whoever called the meeting reimburses the company for the wasted time from their own pocket.
Meetings you are forced to go to, which waste your time, are the typical sort many of us are subjected to in the workplace. A conference or other voluntary "meeting" is hardly what they're talking about. Don't be confused by words.
There should be courses in how to conduct and participate in meetings starting in high school, and no one should be allowed out of college without having taken a couple such courses. The amount of time and resources wasted on poor organization and participation in meetings - some evidence in the other comments here - is really extraordinary. But being a good participant in a meeting requires more than showing up and saying what ever jumps in to your brain cell.
I am glad nobody is jumping to conclusions.
Most of us just don't have that "jump to conclusion mat"
May Peace Prevail On Earth
...that you should cancel the next meeting with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/husband. All that dang communication crap gets in the way of _______ (insert favorite fantasy activity that might happen if you had a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or husband)!
Too much communication is a problem? Too many meetings are a problem? Who's running the meetings? Is there some magic metric out there that gauges if my meetings are more or less detrimental than yours? Why don't we all just squirrel away in our cubes or offices, do the crap that we think is best, and see what happens at the end of the quarter?
Goodbye, Boring Meetings! Hello, Bankruptcy Court!
All face-to-face communication is not equal. Assuming that it is, and making blanket assumptions with uncontrolled data is worse than going to too many meetings, realizing your depressed, and telling your boss to kiss off. It may get you fired, but that meeting won't be boring.
Tim
P.S. Read "Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable" by Patrick Lencioni, or any of his other books.
I don't mind the occasional meeting. However, I used to work at a place that had meetings to discuss more meetings. It was insane. 5-6 hours a day in meetings, usually regarding techy stuff, but with managers who didn't understand technology.
Hey! Something's broken! Let's have a meeting to discuss this critical thing instead of letting our IT guys work on it. And half the time, all of the managers and directors would have a closed door meeting without any tech people to decide what to do, and then come out and start telling people to reboot things, like switches and routers. It was insane.
I've never been so stressed out in my life. The worst part, is I was stressed for no reason. I really didn't do any work there considering I was required in all these meetings where nothing got done. I have a strong suspicion that meetings are they only way for incompetent managers to seem like they are doing something.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
This just about says it all:g
http://pw1.netcom.com/~shagbert/humor/meetings.jp
What better way to attract the core audience?
on second thought this post is not worth the effort of thinking up a few silly, obvious headlines...
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
I don't believe this article at all. Seriously, where do they come off saying that meetings make people negative. Sounds like they're trying to point the finger at everything these days. Meetings.. cubicles.. I mean next they're going to blam- AAUGH, I'll finish this later, it's meeting time.
You hit the nail on the head. It's not that meetings are a waste - they aren't. It's that too many ppl schedule wasteful time in their meetings. If you can complete your objectives of the meeting in 15 minutes -- then adjourn and let ppl get back to work.
I've sat in too many meetings that went an hour simply because they were scheduled for that long. Most of the time, the information could have been covered in 15 min or less and the meeting leader winds up "filling" the extra time with mindless bantering and/or information.
As a project mgr, I used to go by the "say what you have to say and be done" philosophy. As such, my meetings hardly ever lasted more then 30 min. And the people on my team actively told me that this style was effective and a nice relief from the normal "schedule an hour" routine.
I used to have a manager who managed by meals. He'd walk by and "let's go grab a breakfast burrito, I'm buying." On the way to the parking lot were the timetable questions, any problems? Shipping? Customer sign off? At lunch time he'd buy lunch for the next project over. Somedays he'd need someone to drive him to Frys and look around. You've got a truck, let's drive down this afternoon. He knew more about what everbody was doing than anyone else I've ever reported to. He was only only a fair coder, an incredible hardware geek but an outstanding manager. Later on he was laid off in a merger and the company added a new project manager group staffed with people who didn't know the the customers or products. They lost 60 percent of their customers before I bailed.
At our office, we have a meeting every morning for the tech support crew and developers. Sometimes, our boss can't make it to these meetings for one reason or another. Here are the average meeting times:
With boss present: 20 mins
Without boss present: 4 mins
Both are equally productive.
So there's this biz book out there called Death by Meeting. It's like 110 pages long, and it's setup like The Goal in that it's a fictional story about a company that's used as a vehicle to explain an idea.... I'm not a fantastically quick reader and I was able to knock it out in about 6 hours.
While the story was lame, the concept was fscking brilliant, and what's more... it worked. And to save you a few hours and $20, here's the gist:
The basic premise is that most meetings are unproductive affairs that always seem to either wander off topic or get mired down in political squabbling, and this is bad because meetings are the one chance you have for getting everyone on the same page and executing The Grand Uber Strategy for your organization. The book posits that the problem isn't really the meeting, but how the meetings are organized and says that you should design them to be kind of like TV shows.... there are 10 minute meetings (CNN length) that you use as kind of current events thing and do daily, 30 minute - 1 hour meetings (Sienfeld length) either weekly or biweekly to discuss execution problems, the big hairy 2 hour+ meetings (movie length) you use for strategy sessions once a quarter, and the 2-3 day yearly "retreats" where the gameplan for the entire year is hashed out (more for the C?O level twinkies).
By putting a time limit on it and setting strict boundaries for what you can and can't discuss, you keep the meeting on track and the important stuff in focus. That makes the meeting a true information exchange instead of the 3 hour suckfest. Everyone in the group gets about a minute to sum up what they did yesterday and what they plan to do today in the daily meetings, and you simply smack the guy that starts talking about how we should probably move the app from Fedora Core servers to Debian servers upside the head and tell him to save it for the weekly 1 hour meeting where you'll have time for debate on the issue.
I had a chance to implement this for about a quarter (until the company hired a "real" manager), and I was extremely happy with the results. Folks knew what was going on, what needed to get done, and not only did our little IT group stop stepping on each other toes and dropping the ball on important tasks, we actually started to get kudos from other groups. You talked to one guy in the group, and he could tell you the grand strategy for the department for that quarter, could tell you who was working on what project, and let you know what the other person's status was. When the VPs would run down to ask a question, we all had the same (correct) answer, and life was good because they didn't think we were lazy, unprofessional, unshaven bums who were just trying to weasel out of doing work. The Linux guys could tell you what the Windows guys were up to and vice versa, so the VPs got the same story no matter who they talked to.
Meetings, done right, can be a powerful (and painless) tool that will beat the snot out of impersonal email missives any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays. Think of it as an agile methodology for business operations. :)
The rub is figuring out a diplomatic way to tell your boss he sucks at calling and running meetings and getting him/her to fix the problem.
Meetings - None of us is as dumb as all of us
http://www.despair.com/meetings.html
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHB
I've had my share of bad meetings in my life, to be sure. But where I work now, I have been really lucky.
My boss is extremely hands off, recognizing that I know what I need to do and that I get it done. When we have meetings, he usually takes us to lunch and discusses things over lunch. Usually less than half the time is devoted to work topics.
I have not yet had to go to a meeting that I felt was a time waster. The closest one so far was a meeting to discuss how we were going to prepare a response to a Request For Information.
Many of the meetings I go to are actually presentations to customers. Sometimes I am even presenting. In these meetings, I get to meet and converse with new people, and there is usually food, which is always good with me.
I guess the reason I don't have a problem with the meetings I end up going to is that they are not a distraction that takes me away from my work. When I go to a meeting it is because it IS my work.
Perhaps companies ought to give you a 1 hour project slippage allowance for every one hour meeting that they require you to go to.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
But there can be good and useful meetings.
. shtm
Here's what I found on a website: 5 reasons to have a meeting.
There are five reasons to have a meeting. Each may be a perfectly fine reason. Make sure everyone at your meeting knows and agrees with which of these you are there to accomplish.
1. Give information. "Hello everyone. I've brought you all together today to let you know what's been going on about the pending lawsuit. I'd like you to leave here today understanding what's going on, and with as much background as you need to be able to answer questions that may arise from our customers."
2. Get information. "Thanks for coming. We've invited you all here to find out from everyone what we should be aware of that's going on in your division relative to the new product roll-out. We want to know what's happening at all levels in the organization about this, so we can make some adjustments in our plans accordingly."
3. Develop options. "Wed like to spend this afternoon surfacing, formulating, and exploring as many possible ways to deal with the problem we've just uncovered in the new system implementation. We want to make sure we've got everyone's perspectives and all the possible alternatives formulated."
4. Make decisions. "We've brought you all together this morning to present to you the three proposed approaches to launching our new product, and get a consensus decision on which one to pursue."
5. Warm magical human contact. "There are 3 agenda items we would like to cover today. And though we could have done this by email, we wanted to have an opportunity to bring the new team together in one place, and get some time to get to know each other between the lines..."
You may often have more than one of these agendas--sometimes even all five. "Today I'm going to share some information with you, and get some information from you as well. We're then going to explore some possible approaches to the situation, and then decide our best course of action. Meanwhile it will give us a chance to get to know each other a little more as real people..."
Pretty common sense stuff. Right. But, ever sat in a room with someone trying to make a decision, someone else just wanting to do some brainstorming about some possibilities, some people just wanting to get to know who they're working with, and someone else just wanting to get some information about the situation? And they all wind up wanting to kill each other?
It's very valuable to get clarification and agreement on the front end, as to which of the five reasons for a meeting you have going on.
[Thanks to Andrew Grove of Intel for 1 - 4 above, from his elegant management
writing. - DA]
---
Also see: ">http://www.martynemko.com/pub/articles/meetings
Excerpt:
1. A good reason to call a meeting is for people to give progress reports.
Answer: False. That's better done via E-mail.
(Comment: YEAH!)
2. Each meeting agenda should list the topics to be discussed--for example, the company pay structure.
False. Each meeting's agenda item should list the expected outcome--for example, an agreement on a new pay structure. That reduces the risk that the meeting will be all jawboning and no outcome.
I once worked with a young guy who gave me a bit of wisdom he inheirited from his father.
When he had to have meetings he removed all the chairs from the room. That shortened the meeting down. People left off the stupid comments that seem to be made just so they can reply.
It works for me.
Why do Ph.D's always have to prove things that have been understood by us common folk for ages upon ages? No duh meetings are bad for your mood!
- Adam
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
Meetings, regaldess of their nature they always inviariable communicate to the antendees the following essential truisms.
1.
Regardless of who is hosting the meeting, there's a person in CHARGE of the whole enchilada.
If you are that person, the Meetings pumps your ego like a 777 landing gear tire, if you are not, Meetings kindly re-iterate that to you too.
2.
The person in charge get's pay more than everybody else. If you forgot that,
check your schedule, you are not getting enough Meetings!
3.
The person in charge not only get's paid more than everybody else but has the intrinsic power to make everybody else's life a living hell.
Meetings embody this precept to prefection.
Perhaps it was that very reason meetings were invented in the first place.
The moment authority and power was created and was handed solely to a single individual the next thing heard from that individual's mouth was:
"Let's have a Meeting"
And that, simply stated, is why meetings SUCK!!!.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
I've had some very nice meetings which were definately an improvement to moral. Adding donuts is a nice touch, or the semi-informal lunch meetings (paid for, good food, and discussion) were never approached with the type of dread that a large blank tables, and complaint-filled boardroom meeting tended to present.
The problem is, at least in the software development world, that the majority of meetings are about the same topic: "How can we bring the schedule in without dropping any features?". Since there usually isn't any solution to this problem, the meeting fails to achieve it's goal (and makes the schedule T hours * N participants later) resulting in another meeting the next day (or perhaps later the same day) on the exact same topic. Sometimes I think software engineers are required to check their brains at the door when they are 'promoted' into management.
I am sick of these damn articles where researchers find a correlation, and some journalist who doesn't know any better goes ahead and ascribes a cause. That's bad enough, but then everyone, including other scientists, including US, go about BELIEVING the cause invented by the journalist. We're the geeks; WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER!
People, all that we have is some statistics that say that meetings and moodiness are CORRELATED - not that one causes the other, nor that they aren't both caused by some external factor.
Let's all go to our elementary stats texts and read aloud from page one: CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION! CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION!
Sorry, this is too general a statement to be made from this study. Factories are another location where meetings improve mood.
In offices, where people tend to be professionals, the staff would rather continue working (doing what they do best) than sit around in a meeting. In factories, where people are doing the same thing over and over, meetings are a wonderful break from the routine.
This was posted on a shipyard meeting room. It always seemed to me to be the most accurate statement regarding meetings. "Any problem can be made unsolvable if enough meetings are held to discuss it" I'll bet Microsoft has had tens of thousands of meeting on security!
I always thought that meetings were for the non-smokers. Smokers go outside and talk about the office girls, visiting office girls, and people in meetings.
Meanwhile, in meetings, discussions are held regarding the hot smoker girls, and visting girls who are smoking.
> Perhaps we should be more understanding
> with our moody bosses?
Perhaps you need to get out of America and get a life. Your bosses make up for that stress by being able to afford things you'll never have.
Amazingly to me, he started using more efficient means of distributing information to me, and when my presence was actually crucial to a meeting, he started arranging my agenda items to appear close to the start of the meeting, and excusing me from the remainder of the meeting whenever possible. My performance review did suffer slightly in the communication category, but my productivity and initiative ratings were through the roof.
The funny part is that there were people who were a lot busier than me, who couldn't figure out how I managed to get myself excused so often when they had to suffer. The fact was they never really tried. Never underestimate the power of being candid. You just might get what you want.
This space intentionally left blank.
Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Nah... they will just find oher reasons to be Point-Haired Bastards that can't greet you with a "good morning" before they start their drive-by management for the day.
I don't know if anyone noticed, but the author of the original article is given as: Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of Improbable Research http://www.improbable.com/ and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize. The /. discussion has been very inspiring, far beyond what Marc had in mind when he published this.