As I sat to write my first newsletter for techmanagerguide, my 6-year old kid came to me and asked “Daddy, what are you doing?”
I replied to him that I finished work and planned to spend the next 120 minutes on writing the first blog for my newsletter. He asked me what I was going to write about.
I replied “I’ll be writing about my work, leadership, blah blah blah”.
He replied back sharply “Are you going to write about meetings then?”
He struck a chord indeed (he has mostly seen me talking with someone over call). I decided this could be an interesting and useful topic that I can start my newsletter with.
Spending more time on meetings is a harsh truth for engineering managers. For nearly 60% of my daily time, I’ll be in meetings (formal and informal discussions). If it ends up unproductive, it will impact not only me but also my team and ultimately my organization. Getting better at conducting and being in meetings is a crucial learning that I had when I started as an engineering manager and continues to be challenging.
Are meetings always bad? - In this post, I’ll write about how to do meetings that don't suck, sharing my personal experience on the go and as an engineering manager what can you do about it.
Warmed up and warmed down
Are you jumping right into a discussion in a meeting without warming up by setting the context, goal and expected outcome of the meeting? - there’s a high chance that meeting participants don't understand why that meeting is happening, why they are there and what will be the outcome.
Warm up 🔥 (Spend 5% of total meeting time) - Before the start of every meeting, set the context, define roles and goals of the meeting. Clarify any questions or differences at the earliest to make sure everyone understands the purpose of the meeting.
Core 🎯 (Spend 85% of total meeting time) - Get into the core discussion of the meeting. Make sure you keep it collaborative by using the right tools and techniques to keep everyone engaged and focused on what is intended to be discussed.
Warm down 🧊 (Spend 10% of total meeting time) - Allocate some time to wrap up, define next steps and action items if applicable with ownership. Clarify any final questions your team might have.
Focus is on Getting Things Done
“Getting Things Done” and “Meetings” are 2 extremes nowadays. People see meetings as unnecessary and something that sucks time out of their productive day. Gaining needed insights, setting the context, making decisions and defining next steps and action items along with ownership are forms of getting things done for meetings. Define at the start how “getting things done” will look like for that meeting and make sure you tick all the checkboxes coming out of that meeting.
In some cases, meetings could be that blocker that doesn’t allow the team to move forward until the team has that meeting. Unblocking someone can already be seen as getting things done.
It serves the purpose
Meetings are of no use if it happens for the sake of having it. Every meeting your team is having should have a clear purpose, roles and outcome defined.
Purpose & Outcome
Defining a clear purpose on why your team is having a meeting, impact on your team and what will be missed if you don’t have it. Adding it as a description in your meeting invite or documenting somewhere else can help your team to refer to it or even act as a reference to new members of that meeting.
Main purpose and outcome of any meeting should be to:
Share info - Meeting to share technical/non-technical information so that it benefits the audience to acquire that knowledge. Most of this meeting can be done async as well over writing. But if code walkthrough needs to be shown or explain how technically something will work, live meetings could help in this case to give better insights and be productive as well.
Make decisions - Meetings where decisions are to be made such as architectural decisions, decision on requirement specification with product owners, decision on priorities etc.
Decide next steps and action items - Meetings that move the needle by clearly making progress on the topic of interest, planned action items and clear follow up to yield the desired outcome
Yielding an outcome is the crucial part of having a meeting. With roles and purpose defined, if there are no outcomes, you as an engineering manager are responsible to review it. Is it due to the lack of motivation of your teammates? Or the purpose of the meeting misunderstood? - You have to dig deeper to find it.
Sometimes technical discussions can’t be concluded in one sitting and may need a follow up. In this case, next steps and action items to be defined that act as an input for the next meeting.
Roles
Meeting with clearly defined roles is more productive than having none. I recently started having these roles in my meetings:
Lead - One who sets up and leads the meeting and is responsible for the outcome of the meeting. Lead brings in the right people to the right meeting, sets the clear context and agenda and outcome expected out of that meeting.
Moderator - One who moderates the meeting, keeps the time, steers the conversation in the right direction and responsible for overall collaboration and engagement of the meeting.
Note taker or Observer - One who takes notes, plays the role of an observer. Can also add their viewpoint as well. Shall send minutes of meeting containing discussion points, action items and next steps to every participant.
Participant - One who participates in the discussion of a meeting
If a member of a meeting is having none of the above roles, it could indicate that they aren’t needed in that meeting.
What role do you play as an engineering manager in meetings? - you can play any of the roles depending on the context of the meeting. In one meeting, you lead and in another you observe and suggest improvements to those meetings. In general, you should add value to the meetings or meetings should add value for you. If none of it happens, rethink the need of the meeting for you and it’s an opportunity to cut down on your meetings. You should do the same thinking for your teammates in the meetings they are part of and empower them to decide whether they should be in a meeting or not.
In general, you should add value to the meetings or meetings should add value for you.
How many times have you heard people saying that they aren’t sure why they are in a meeting? - it’s time to define the roles and make the purpose clear.
Timed Right
Is your team having an important meeting right at the end of the day, when they are a bit exhausted (shun mode 🙃) and have a lack of attention and interest? On the other hand are you having routine meetings right at the peak of productivity (zen mode 🧘) of your team and that disturbs your developers flow? - Make sure you time the meetings right.
I try to schedule important meetings like strategic discussions, goal setting, requirement presentation etc. right at the start of the day to discuss them with a fresh mind. Obviously it will be difficult to time the meeting as everyone has personal preference. I would recommend coming to a common agreement as a “team’s schedule” and find that sweet spot to conduct meetings that don't hinder developer flow and also not at the time where there will be less focus (end of the day for example).
Timing could also mean how long the meeting is. Recently I’m conducting my team meetings in the cadence of 25 minutes and proving to be effective. Instead of a traditional 30 minute meeting, we’re doing a 25 minute meeting. 50 instead of 60, 100 instead of 120 and so on. Your team would appreciate the extra time they would get for their own work or even to take a short break. I would urge not to underestimate such small optimizations as it paid us back greatly.
It is efficient than anything else
Sometimes meetings are more efficient than anything else. In my experience, sometimes written communication has led to unclear communication, confusions, to-and-fro discussions and rework which could have been sorted out in meetings otherwise. Decide wisely on when to go for async and when to have sync meetings.
Come prepared; Go accomplished
Insist meeting participants to come prepared by clearly assigning their role, letting them know what’s the context of the meeting and if there is any pre-work that participants should do to keep the discussion focused and to the point.
I brought up this analogy “Come prepared; Go accomplished” to remind my team to come prepared for meetings and go accomplished from the meeting. Empower them to question the value, purpose and need of the meeting to understand whether the goal is accomplished and they played a part in it.
Check with your team whether they leave every meeting with a feeling of accomplishment. If not, it’s your duty to check what’s missing and what can you do about it.
Pro-tip 💡
As an engineering manager:
Review the purpose, need and outcome of all your team's meetings on a regular basis. I review it every month to make sure it serves the purpose and stays fresh to the current context. Surveys can help in gathering feedback from your teammates which helps you in making data driven decisions on meetings.
Ask a question yourself and to your team - what will be missed if you don't have a meeting? If there’s nothing to be missed, do you really need that meeting?
Always keep your ears, eyes and mind open to observe how your teammates perceive meetings. Check with them 1-1 or in a team setup if you see them detached or express a concern about the format of meetings.
It’s on your shoulders to make sure your team stays productive and spends the right time on the right meetings. Open for feedback, attention to details and defining clear purpose and outcome for your meetings are the key.
Meetings, if conducted right, can lead to better ways of working together and in fact saves time sometimes to avoid confusions, to-and-fro discussions and rework. There’s nothing specific that’s bad, it’s in the way we execute it. Same goes with meetings as well.
There’s nothing specific that’s bad, it’s in the way we execute it.
From your experience, fill what comes after “meetings aren’t that bad if …..” by adding your comments. I would love to know your thoughts.
Looking for ways to cut down meetings? - I’ll be writing about it soon. Stay tuned!