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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?"
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...
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 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 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.
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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
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.
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