Meetings
topic on 9 shows · 32 statements across 18 episodes
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32 statements about Meetings, every show
Jorgenson: Employees attend unnecessary meetings for political face-time with leaders
“There's a dynamic where people, I think, want to be in the same room as like the person, the CEO, the leader, the whatever, like that, that those meetings are an opportunity for FaceTime probably in some ways that are like more about the political game than th…”
Ending meetings with individual takeaways exposes interpretation gaps
“Typically the last part of the meeting that I personally like to do is actually have everybody give their takeaways. And what I find fascinating is that everybody then as they walk through it, you can see how they interpreted everything that they heard.”
Abrahams: Meetings are often band-aids for deeper organizational issues
“Meetings are often band-aids for bigger problems.”
Gridley: Product managers' back-to-back meeting schedules are partly self-inflicted
“A lot of PMs are like, oh my gosh, I'm so busy, I have no time, I'm in meetings all day, but like, that's a little bit self-inflicted, I think. Like, at some point, like, you have to be the one responsible for getting yourself out of the weeds. And it's hard t…”
Lieberman: Meetings carry the highest opportunity cost of internal communication
“A meeting is a form of communication in a company that has the highest opportunity cost of time.”
Lieberman: Scheduling a meeting is often a lazy substitute for working
“And I find meetings are oftentimes a lazy attempt to get something done. Something needs to be done, and the easiest thing to do is for you to just throw time on a calendar instead of just doing the thing now.”
Lieberman: Schedule meetings for two-thirds of the time you think they need
“Lesson number two, make meetings two thirds as long as you think they need to be. One of the worst practices is when a meeting goes the full time, just because that's what the calendar said. And we all do this in life. When we give ourselves a certain amount o…”
Lieberman: Treat every meeting as a product and attendees as its customers
“A meeting is a product and its customers are its attendees.”
Lieberman: Asking three specific post-meeting feedback questions improves meeting quality
“You should ask them three very simple questions, and these three questions will lead to information that will make your meetings way better over time. You should ask them if they think the meeting was a good use of their time. You should ask them if they think…”
Lieberman: Memorializing Meeting Outcomes Is as Important as the Meeting Itself
“Memorializing the meeting is just as important as having the meeting itself.”
Cain: Kellogg research shows three people do 70% of meeting talking
“So there's a statistic from the Kellogg School that in your typical meeting, you have three people doing 70% of the talking.”
Two-Thirds of Sales Meetings Are Scheduled via Cold Calling
“Most meetings are set, like two thirds are set as a cold call.”
Cohn: End meetings by defining decisions, action items, and communication needs
“So my three questions to end the meeting are, what did we decide here? Who needs to do what by when and who else needs to know? And if you can capture those, right? Art like articulate those as deliverables. I promise you, you're going to have better meetings.”
Cohn: Meeting attendees usually give conflicting answers on what was decided
“What did we decide here? If you really go around the room at the end of a meeting or six people in the meeting, let's say, and you say to everybody, what did we decide here? And they all write it down. You will get six different answers. Even though we're in t…”
Joe Hudson: Meetings and decisions are the atomic structure of a company
“The atomic structure of a company is the meetings and the decisions.”
Kalin: Meetings not worth standing up for should not happen
“If it's not worth standing up for, you shouldn't be having a meeting.”
Spataro: Demonstrating Copilot live in meetings drove Microsoft's internal AI adoption
“We would use them in meetings. We'd send meeting summaries that were created by the copilot. We'd, in the middle of a meeting, use it to kind of analyze what was happening. And I'll tell you what, that drove adoption, diffusion, and curiosity more than anythin…”
Dave Morin: Scheduling meetings in advance relies on outdated information
“People reaching out for meetings usually have a decision to make, or they are trying to work through an idea, and it is happening in the present. By asking for a meeting and then punching it out into the future, you're actually operating on bad information.”
Lieberman: Meetings carry the highest opportunity cost of all communication
“A meeting is a form of communication in a company that has the highest opportunity cost of time. So the bar should be super high for when you call a meeting.”
Lieberman: A one-hour meeting with five people costs five hours
“And a one hour meeting with five people isn't a one hour meeting. That's so important to understand. It's a five hour meeting in terms of the trade off for all people that are in attendance.”
Lieberman: Meetings are often a lazy alternative to doing work
“And I find meetings are oftentimes a lazy attempt to get something done. Something needs to be done, and the easiest thing to do is for you to just throw time on a calendar instead of just doing the thing now.”
Lieberman: Schedule meetings for two-thirds of estimated duration to prevent tangents
“Make meetings two thirds as long as you think they need to be. One of the worst practices is when a meeting goes the full time, just because that's what the calendar said. And we all do this in life. When we give ourselves a certain amount of time to finish a …”
Lieberman: Meetings are strictly for small groups making high-impact decisions
“Three to five people attend a meeting to make an important decision that has cross organizational implications.”
Lieberman: Initial brainstorming should be done asynchronously, not in meetings
“Meetings are also not for initial brainstorms. Those should be done independently and then shared over docs or email, and then you can come together to make a joint decision around that brainstorm via a meeting.”
Lieberman: Status updates belong in email, not synchronous meetings
“And finally, meetings are not for status updates. Those should be sent via email.”
Lieberman: Meetings are products and attendees are customers
“A meeting is a product and its customers are its attendees.”
Foroughi: Corporate meetings are fundamentally driven by a fear of loss
“That's fundamentally why people have a lot of meetings is fear of loss.”
Meetings must be reserved for multi-way communication, not status updates
“Meetings are not meant for updates. Meetings are not meant for status reports. Meetings are meant for two or multi-way communication. And if they don't have that, they're likely better off being an email form.”
DHH: Meetings Are Only Useful for Four or Fewer People
“Meetings are great when you have two or three or four. That's probably the limit. If you get into five, it's already starting to be problematic. But let's just say four people who are very well informed about specific set of issues, and they're not on the same…”
DHH: Restricting Meetings to Debate Resolution Eliminates 80% of Them
“Yes, that filter will cut off at least 80% of all the meetings that most people have.”
Sinofsky: Managers should use meetings for action, not receiving status reports
“Like, what your role as a manager is in a meeting is no longer to be reported to, because frankly, if you want to know, you should just go visit the place that everybody on the team is already using to keep track of their information. And when you get everybod…”