Meetings are Bad For You 283
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?"
bollocks (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeeeaaaahh... no. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Too few meetings can be bad too (Score:5, Insightful)
Balance is the key (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:bollocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad management often leads to a plethora of needless meetings.
I always like the approach of having meetings standing up - suitable uncomfortable, focuses minds, people soon only schedule meetings that are really required, and they are brief.
Re:bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what "Too many" means...
I enjoy meetings (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the time, that reason is to make middle managers (whose job consists exclusively of writing memos and attending meetings) look busy. The more incapable the manager is of writing effectively and/or the more unwilling to have a record of exactly what they said, the more likely you are to have a full daily schedule of meetings.
Now watch as I reveal the one most evil and stupid word in modern business - communication. Not simply the actual fact of doing so, but the implication that communication solves all business problems, sort of like how everyone thought communication solved all marital problems back in the 80's when it was popular to say that. Communication is a load of horse shit. There is no such thing as a communication problem. Every "communication" problem in modern business is in fact a confidence problem. The information is readily available, but 2 things block its distribution: 1 - Managers don't like to go on record. They don't reply to e-mails, for example. They lack the confidence to go on record with whatever they want to say. Here's an idea - if you don't have the balls to put your "communication" on paper with your name on it for all to see, then STFU. If you lie frequently enough that committing anything to writing hampers your ability to work, then you need to be fired. 2 - For the reasons documented above, employees have no confidence in anything managers have to say. I've never seen anything cited as a communication problem that was not actually communicated in fact. "I guess we need better communication between you/your department and me/my department." has become the polite and meaningless mea culpa for the business age.
NO! We don't need more communication. We need to STFU and get back to work!
Re:Well, no freakin' kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have found that one meeting a week is sufficient; I tell people where I'm at on what I'm working, what my schedule looks like, and to remind them to provide me with concise details for any projects they may have upcoming. Past that, the odd development meeting where I might have to collaborate with someone, but the fact is you should only ever really have to have one meeting to determine who does what, and then actually give them the time to do it.
Re:bollocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:bollocks (Score:3, Insightful)
I've worked at several large and small companies over the past few years, as an employee and as a contractor. One thing I've found consistent is that meetings with contractors are concise and to the point because they are paying for the contractors time. Meetings with employees only seem to drag on.
Two things are needed for a meeting to actually be productive.
1. A good boss/moderator to KEEP THINGS ON TOPIC!
2. A good boss/moderator to KEEP THINGS ON TOPIC!
If the meeting is kept on topic it will go quickly and we can all get back to work knowing the bosses new/altered expectations.
If elemet one or two are missing we all get cranky and nothing gets done.
Re:bollocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Disdain for written communication (hard copy or e-mail) may not be due to lack of confidence. I'm not a manager but I've communicated via e-mail long enough to know that there are many "information exchange" (if you don't like the word communication) situations that don't lend themselves well to e-mail. In fact, e-mail is horrid for many situations. Think about a harrasment situation. There's more to business than black and white work.
While I agree office politics are the primary cause for "communication problems", it's not the only issue. Not everyone in an organization things exactly the same or shares the same opinions. Coming off as a ruthless manager (especially for all to see) is a sure-fire way to get nowhere.
Re:Yeeeaaaahh... no. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Indeed, maybe you aren't. But assuming you want to join a successful company that will be around next year, you won't be able to avoid it.
I have gone through a few start-ups and can tell you, the number of and importance of mettings is directly proportional to the number of employees at a company. When you first start out and have 4-6 engineering people working in a small office, you don't need meetings. Everyone is on the same "team", everyone knows what everyone else is doing, if you have a question you just spin your chair around and ask.
Fast forward ahead 6 months to a year, assuming the company is a success, you now have 15-20 engineers. You are no longer within casual talking distance without shouting across the office and disturbing everyone. As well, there are at least two teams with different taksk, each having their own project leader, eahc of which reports to some kind of head-hauncho. Now, said hauncho must also report to the sales guys, the CEO, the board, deal with employee issues, overall project planning, etc. He absolutely does *not* have time to do all this, and also keep tabs on 20 other people, no matter what kind of superman he is. This is why authority is delegated to the team leads, and why there *has* to be a meeting between him and the team leads ot keep him up to speed. There are certian things that just go way faster face-to-face than via email communications, and weekly status updates are one of them, because they involve a lot of back-and-forth questioning.
Now, assuming said company stays successful, in another few years you'll have some 50-100 engineers working on multiple teams, which not only need to report to the boss, but also interact with each other, as their projects likely overlap. Of course there has to be meetings for this as well.
you hit (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Things are different in sales (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that extraverts (who tend to predominate in sales, marketing, and the upper strata of management) are obviously going to enjoy the atmosphere of a meeting far more than introverts (who tend to predominate in programming and other nose-to-the-metal jobs). Other things being equal, an extravert actually gains energy from being with a bunch of other people, whereas an introvert may feel her will to live gradually draining away.
Disclaimer: this is a broad generalization, and there are plenty of exceptions - introverted sales stars, extraverted developers, etc. That actually confuses the issue even further, as the extraverted developer may be the one who enjoys meetings and can't see what the rest of the team are bellyaching about.
Re:Things are different in sales (Score:3, Insightful)
And in factory work (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Things are different in sales (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know what kind of meetings you go to, but this is exactly WHY they have sales meetings. Instead of having all those people running around making their own interpretations about the product, coming to possibly different conclusions, or getting incomplete information, then having to contact the vendor and clarify, they get them all into one room and do it all at the same time. Meet with 100 salesmen in-duh-vidually, or meet with all 100 at once, so they can hear others questions as well as their answers? Not a tough choice.
I'm not in sales, and I'm not a giant fan of meetings, however the ones I do attend are mainly for me and my team and not a soapbox for the management. Its how they can convey team-oriented progress to us without having to meet with the 20+ of us separately and say the same thing to everyone. Fortunately the area where I work has a manager that is aware of when a meeting is not necessary, and they get cancelled or ended early often when they are not productive or when someone has more important work to do.
Nobody asked you to like meetings. Some are helpful, some are a waste of time. Its part of the job.
Re:Useless meetings are bad (Score:2, Insightful)
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To do collaborative work. If two or three people need to agree on an interface, they can either go through a zillion iterations by email, or they can just sit down in front of a whiteboard and argue until they're done with the whole thing. I've seen design discusssions that should have been done in an afternoon take a week or more because someone flat-out refused to have a meeting about it.
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Some things just need to be said in front of everyone else. In particular, publicly confessing your planned schedule in front of your colleagues may not be good for your soul, but it's certainly good for ensuring that it gets done.
I'll point out that both of these are stressful activities. They're just easier in the long run than the non-meeting-based alternatives that I know of.