Meetings Make You Dumber 207
Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."
Nice Timing (Score:3, Funny)
I can feel my brain atrophy.
Re:Nice Timing (Score:4, Funny)
Never fear! (Score:4, Funny)
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hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like someone wrote this writeup while in a meeting...
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Not at all. The title is a very creative interpretation of the story.
long-time Slashdot quirk...editor's fault? (Score:3, Funny)
Title: "Learn The Language Of Math"
Text: "...from first principles. Metamath does not claim to teach you mathematics, just as..."
From Metamath (around that time) [archive.org]: "The choice of title for this story, "Learn The Language Of Math," was unfortunate and was the Slashdot editor's, not mine."
Some things never change...*tags story "confictingtitleandsummary"*.
Point of Article: Avoid Group Think (Score:5, Informative)
The point of the article wasn't that meetings are bad. The point was that group think at meetings is bad. The example they gave was that if people go off and develop a list of ideas on their own, the combined list of ideas is longer than if people develop a list of ideas together in the group.
There are two points that are important here. First, a group of people is likely to develop more ideas than a single person regardless of whether the group develops the ideas together or separately. Second, when it comes to choosing one idea from the list of many possible ideas, a well organized group is going to make a better choice than a single individual. In fact, the biggest problem in a poorly run group is that one person makes all the decisions so it is equivalent to a single individual make the choice.
That was basically the point of the article: for a group to be effective it needs to be organized to allow everyone in the group to have input.
In a perfect world, maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, avoid meetings as much as possible. Use email and the telephone and finally, talk to people in their cubicles/offices. Use the one-to-one means of communicating as much as possible. People will give you more information and more SENSITIVE information in person than they will in a group.
Once you have all of that and you've run through the email/telephone/cubicle cycle a few times, then call a short meeting to make sure that everyone sees everyone else agreeing in public to what they've agreed to.
Meetings suck. Avoid them.
Re:In a perfect world, maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
I know there's an IT and/or software development/engineering lens through which a lot of Slashdotters view the world. But many of the assumptions don't migrate to other contexts well. A receptionist, an IT tech, an industrial designer, and a financial analyst all have very different relationships to meetings, information, and creativity.
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The other thing I always say is, "There should be a law against meetings longer than an hour."
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I agree. There have been 'crunch' times...where I desperately needed to be let alone, to get code/procedures written...get data out..etc.
Yet I was constantly being dragged out for meetings...design?, progress reports...amazing I was still able to get it done, but, man, it did nothing but increase the stress level of the few people actually
...perfect world, maybe. Ha! (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't have said it better. The truth is that most meetings I've attended, most mandatory, are a waste of time. They are simple management tactics that make their managers think everyone is working as a team, when they usually have no topics for discussion.
However, I disagree that a meeting of multiple people will invariably lead to a wa
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The point of the article wasn't that meetings are bad.
You must be a PHB, right?
Re:Point of Article: Avoid Group Think (Score:5, Interesting)
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Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at an ad agency where by definition we have Creative Meetings where creative concepts are going to be brainstormed.
Meetings are not all simply to seek consensus, etc...
Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:5, Funny)
Adventures of Action Item, Professional Superhero [fatalexception.org]
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Except for that manager, who's about to get lynched by a mob armed with hard-drive-stuffed-socks.
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Management talks that way, and it makes sence within it's context, learn it or whither.
Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:4, Funny)
Management talks that way, and it makes sence within it's context, learn it or whither.
Whither, indeed. Perhaps you might take the time to learn English.
Ugghhh... (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Meetings are not meant to be creative (Score:4, Funny)
At least, that's how it works in my school system.
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"Lets eliminate that piece of the code, it doesnt do anything anyway"
It sounds like you got a bunch of people in the room to discuss the stuff they should have done anyway.
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The primary reason for this (Score:5, Funny)
The boss want's hoola-hoops with razors on the inside? then you better be a team player and commit 125% to that goal.
You think it's dangerous? not a team player, get out
You think there isn't a market? not a team player, get out
you mention that 100% is pretty much all someone can give without physically harming them selves? not a team player, get out
Forgot to clean the fridge?not a team player, get out
Re:The primary reason for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Every place I've worked (so far), I have in fact been rewarded for coming up with better alternatives to the boss's suggestions, and I've never once been punished for disagreement. Thing is, you have to earn their respect before you can do that...
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Every place I've worked (so far), I have in fact been rewarded for coming up with better alternatives to the boss's suggestions, and I've never once been punished for disagreement. Thing is, you have to earn their respect before you can do that...
Yup. I won't work for a boss who wants to hear "Yes-man" echoing of his own opinions, mainly because I won't do it and we'll end up driving each other crazy. That said, once a decision has been made it's my job to help make it work even if I didn't think it was
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Yeah, I work for a business with an owner that loves yes-men.
Verbally fellate the owner? Get promoted and get big raises.
Take action, make a difference, make the company money? Get back-stabbed by the people that fellate the owner, find yourself written up by HR, and find your honesty and integrity trampled by divisiveness and greed.
Wanna guess who's looking for a new job while barely clinging to sanity?
I'd hope it is the yes-men who are finally sick of choking on the boss' pole, because all the useful and talented staff left long ago.
Re:The primary reason for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe it or not, there are workplaces where it is safe to voice opposition as long as you do what you're told once the decision is made. Your boss shouldn't mind that you tell him it's a bad idea to port your product to the latest trendy language for no good reason, but once he decides that's what the company is doing, you better deliver, 'cause that's what you're being paid for. It's when you refuse to drop it once a decision has been made that you should have to worry about losing your job.
In my experience, most workplaces are like this, and there is always some whiner that doesn't know when to drop it and get to work who thinks that their opinion (rather than their behavior or performance) is what got them in trouble.
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Oh! I never realized it was that easy! Amazing! And I bet if your current boss learns you're looking for another job, like when a recruiter calls you in the middle of the day, he'll be completely understanding about your views.
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Good job!
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Oh! I never realized it was that easy! Amazing! And I bet if your current boss learns you're looking for another job, like when a recruiter calls you in the middle of the day, he'll be completely understanding about your views.
Well, hopping to a new job isn't without some risk. But if you're to the point of burning bridges like this, then it doesn't matter what your boss thinks.Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe it or not, there are workplaces where it is safe to voice opposition as long as you do what you're told once the decision is made.
The difficulty lies in distinguishing such places from those where, if you say "this won't work because of reasons A, B, and C" before the decision is officially final and your prediction proves right, you're accused of causing the failure because you weren't "a team player behind the project 125 percent" yada yada yada....
Such places are worth leaving as soon as y
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Think its dangerous? Suggest marketing it to the 18-24 demographic and an "extreme" advertising comparing while continuing to evaluate the potential liability throughout focus group tests.
Think there isn't a market? Suggest a test marketing campaign " to see which market it would best be leveraged in" Then with firm data about its failure, suggest gradual improvements until the device is no longer a hoola hoop and is now a c
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Re:The primary reason for this (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, "swarm" decision-making based on the aggregate of individual decisions is known to be smarter than any single person. The point is not avoiding meetings or group work, the point is avoid common pitfalls and adopt a working style that deliveries results.
As someone who has been in too many meetings (Score:2)
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Whenever I try to get more than three people to work on a development team for over a week, they split into two teams. One team tries to do everything. The other team tries to do "this half" while they expect the first team to do "that half". In the end, the first team doesn't produce quality work because the workload was too high, and the second doesn't produce quality work because "this ha
Scientific Evidence Already Stated (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, it's always a good idea to realize that in most cases, people are in a situation to satisfy themselves first, then those who are most related to that self next.
I find that in meetings I lead, I spend more time chairing the discussion than growing the actual discussion from the seeds of creation. Group think tends to be the by-product of that one person in your meeting who wont let go of their own idea and continues to bludgeon the group into submission.
Re:Scientific Evidence Already Stated (Score:4, Insightful)
You may want to consider that your definition of groupthink is overbroad. Part of how a business motivates its employees is to convince them to align their personal goals with those of the company. Done properly, satisfying oneself in a business setting means furthering the goals of the company.
Rather than say that gets lost due to groupthink I would say that it gets lost amid all the ass covering and finger pointing that often goes on. In Columbia's case, Lockheed Martin's main goal during the investigation was not to uncover the actual cause but defend against any possibility that they might have been at fault. They offer up test results of their insulation hitting a part of the shuttle that the actual insulation didn't hit, then claim that their insulation could not possibly have caused enough damage to be a problem on reentry. Maybe groupthink led people to believe them, I don't know.
So many companies are managed for the short term that this kind of thing is nearly impossible to prevent. The shuttle blows up, someone looks at a spreadsheet that shows the shuttle business is only 3% of revenue, so whatever future business LHM might have with NASA is sacrificed for the goal of protecting the company.
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It was a major portion of study in college for us from 1990. Presented by a professor of psychology that was also a member of Stanford University. Call me lazy, but I dont feel like pulling the documents for you. Go out to the internet and find them youself.
Columbia is not the same as Challenger.
Certainly Explains Congress (Score:5, Funny)
Which is good! (Score:3)
It's not meetings, it's how/why they are held (Score:4, Informative)
1. Meetings that should never have been held. They serve no real purpose.
2. Meetings with no structure, and no one to lead them
3. Meetings where there is an agenda but no one follows it and no one guides it
4. Meetings that run overtime due to mismanagement and no one is willing to conclude it.
5. Meetings that start late because there is no respect for the time of the attendees.
These are just some of the things that make me dread meetings. Over the last 6 years out of the many meetings I've been obliged to attend maybe five were really useful.
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Actual quote from a useless manager I once had.
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(ducks)
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This is like telling a drowning person that water is essential to life.
It's true, but it's neither relevant nor interesting to the situation they are in. Any white-collar worker in a modern corporate environment is drowning in bad meetings.
One useful thing to do is to simply not attend any meeting that does not have an agenda. Simply tell the organizer that you aren't sure if you should be on the attendees list, and you'd like to se
Brainstorming (Score:2)
Anytime you have more than two people at a time trying to go through this process, you invariably get tied up in social motivations that are detrimental to the outcome. People are afraid to offend. People try to impress. People are afraid of sounding stupid.
The best and most useful creative ideas always come from in
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Your mileage may vary.
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Edward de Bono, Six Thinking Hats
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I disagree, I ahve ran many brainstorming sessions that went very well.
OTOH, I am good at making people know what they are, and not allowing any fallout.
Brainstorming is not a committee, and if the session you have been in are like a committee, then it wasn't brainstorming...it was a committee. People writing thin
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> People are afraid to offend. People try to impress. People are afraid of sounding stupid.
The participants needs to trust and respect each other first.
Obligatory despair.com poster (Score:2)
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Dispair: none of us is as dumb as all of us
I think IQ follows ohms law:
IQtotal = 1 / (1/IQ1 + 1/IQ2Say.... (Score:3, Funny)
I just scanned this great article on MSNBC..Let's have the whole team meet at 4:30, I've got some ideas...
--The Boss
Oh, I Definately Believe That (Score:2, Insightful)
Iraq...9-11...Iraq...9-11...9-11...Iraq...Iraq...
Not entirely to my experience, but close (Score:2, Informative)
I think there may be a certain critical mass where e
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It helps to be flat out busy because then you get less duplication and people tend to stick to what they have to work on. We are pretty lucky in that respect where I work. I find that if you have four people in a meeting, each with a different job to do, then you can c
Validation, not innovation (Score:2)
When employees know which way the boss is leaning, how many feel safe calling him a dope?
I remember when it actually WAS that way at Microsoft, because everyone was respected, and you could tell your manager that his idea sucked, so long as you had a better one and could PROVE it verbally and demonstrate it in code.
These days, opposition to the bosses' idea is a fast track to unemployment.
Companies that are succeeding today hire well, then turn t
How to have a sucessful meeting (Score:4, Interesting)
The author gives the an example of a good meeting, the opening of the old TV show, "LA Law", where the lead attorney came in, laid his pocket watch on the table, then asked everyone to bring him up to speed with what they were doing. The pocketwatch was a device to let the audience know that he valued his time. Always, the meeting was over by the first commercial break. If real life corporate meetings could be more like this, I think we'd get a lot more done.
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Staff meetings went from 2+ hours to about 20 minutes.
Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us. (Score:2)
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ObPlug: Despair, Inc [despair.com]. I don't work for 'em, I just buy their toys.
The one for Burnout [despair.com] is popular with the local BOFH crowd; the one for Arrogance [despair.com] seems to amuse most of the local managers.
Laptop (Score:2)
No Fucking Kidding (Score:3)
From what I've seen, the best projects/products in terms of actual value and progress (not popularity) tend to be the ones entirely controlled by one person. The Linux kernel is an excellent example. It outshines the capabilities of the Windows kernel in so many ways it's not even funny. And it's all under the watchful eye of the benevolent dictator Linus Torvalds. It could even be said that early Apple computers under Steve Jobs' guidance was progressive for similar reasons. All of the "asshole" myths from the 70s and 80s about him indicate that he was still highly involved in controlling the direction of Apple products and pretty much defined what Apple was before he was ousted. Now, if you want the APPEARANCE of progress and value, then you can use committees, consultants and most specifically nice shiny PR to make people THINK you're "the shit". But in reality, you aren't. Sadly the reality based world is not a place people want to live these days.
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They are not run by a dictator. A dictator tends to stifle progress because his idea is law and that's what's going to happen. I had a manager like that once, he was the CEO and everything he said was a good idea. He also had no clue about anything going on outside his office (kinda like the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert), actually that whole company runs like the Dilbert car
Meeting (Score:2)
"We" have decided to comment (Score:5, Funny)
The first action item will be to define what "creativity" actually is. This issue will be discussed at a CD meeting (Creativity Definition Meeting) tentatively scheduled for Monday at 9:45 am. Donuts and coffee will be served.
The results of the CD meeting will be compiled into a compelling Powerpoint presentation and displayed at our weekly Status Meeting on Wednesday at 4:30pm. Please note, we'll all be going out for drinks promptly following the meeting.
Thursday will consist of a full day of intensive focus groups, follow up discussions, and satellite meetings which will put a fine point on the issue of our supposed inability to generate new and compelling ideas. That full day of meetings will be compiled in a pink sheet for distribution to top management prior to our official Slashdot response.
Thank you.
confirmation of ancient knowlege (Score:2)
Effective leaders have known this at least since the Bronze Age.
You do all the creative work, all the organizing,
all the planning and "getting one's ducks in a line"
_before_ the meeting. You talk to all the important
participants, sound them out, and introduce your ideas,
_before_ the meeting.
Then you hold the meeting to review and ratify.
For a picture of an effective leader playing this game
at the grandmaster level, see the second volume of
Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson,
_Master_of_the_Senate_.
social modes and introverts (Score:3, Insightful)
It is interesting to note that in some other cultures, (like France, for example) introversion is respected and placed on an equal footing with extroversion. In the US, and in prevalent US-dominated world culture, extroversion is pushed almost exclusively as the norm. Most introverts are forced into physical spaces (cubicles) and interactions (meeting rooms) with lots of other people around. This leaves an introvert drained and unable to function at their highest ability. Also, the general expectation for most interactions is for real-time discussion (face to face or by phone) where extroverts have a distinct advantage solely because if their ability to respond faster verbally. Email is a notable exception to this in generally accepted practice, where the introverts have a distinct upper hand.
Note: when I use the words introvert and extrovert here, I am not talking about the colloquial social definitions, nor the psychological disorder (maladaptive, overt) introversion, but rather the psychological typing used by MBTI, Keirsey, and other systems.
As the demotivation poster says (Score:2)
Well, it's a close approximation to the poster. Alternatively:
Neither I nor U are in Teamwork.
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# killall boggle ; rm -f
Meetings is where my productivity is highest (Score:3, Funny)
I even seem very active to the other participants, constantly taking notes on my laptop (as far as they know).
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The fact that some meeting are ran poorley by inept people and attended by people who have no interest in anything outside their cube(like you) doesn't mean meetings are bad, it just means you work with people who have no idea how to manage, and/or don't care what happens within the company.
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"in the box" (Score:2)
being around other people introduces an enormous set of implicit norms and expectations. most people follow all these norms completely unconsciously.
U mean the internet stifles creativity? (Score:2)
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Interesting point of view, but I would posit it is the opposite. You see, even though a billion people may participate in a thing, the individual, sitting behind a computer, is working alone (usually). This can be evidenced by the very common, and incorrect, view that the Internet is "anonymous." If everyone on the Internet thought about others on the Internet as if they were in the same room staring at them, flame wars would be much less p
Study isn't really about meetings! (Score:2)
Meetings aren't for that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, if a group of supposedly well-educated people couldn't think of a solution to a problem on their own, multiplying their inability won't magically make 0+0+0=1
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This reminds me of throwing a certain substance against the wall and seeing what sticks. It's as good a description of the meetings I've attended as anything.
IQ of a Committee (Score:2)
How do you determine the IQ of a committee?
Take the average IQ in the room and divide it by the number of people in the committee.
Fortunately, I have this... (Score:2)
Learning to be Smarter (Score:2)
What works for me (Score:3, Interesting)
When I am in charge of making a meeting happen I try to use this little trick: Everyone has X amount of time before the meeting, usually in days. At that meeting be ready with 3 solutions to the problem, and rebuttal arguments for why #1 and (hopefully) #2 were mentally scrapped by the time you figured out option #3.
Now the meeting rolls around and I have say 5 people all ready to go with up to 15 different answers, but before we've even started most of those have been rejected.
We'll still cover all the solutions so we can weed out duplicates, shoot down people's third choice that someone else already thought of and realized a shop stopper ("...And that's why this idea will work." "Well, it would work, but where are we going to get tights in our size at this time of night?"), and correct any assumptions for people's self-realized blockers. ("At first I thought we could do this, but we need Marketing's help and they're buried." "Actually, Marketing just finished our last major project so we have a few days breathing room to help out.")
This keeps the "group think" out of the process until later in the process when the playing field has already narrowed down to 2-3 solid ideas.
Quite the Opposite IMHO (Score:2)
1) I bring my notebook and completely phase out the meeting. The best new ideas come to me that way
2) If you're with a small group of creative people (2-3 max) who are on the same wavelength with you, you might get some synergy. We called this "Crack Smoking" at my old job. (As in: hey, take a whiff of the pipe and consider THIS idea...).
The answer may be meeting lunches (where you go out and casually discuss stuff).
[as opposed to lunch meetin
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Exactly. Putting multiple eyes on a problem is an effective method of spotting flaws. Since not every idea conceived by an individual is worthy of further pursuit (in fact, probably few are) this sort of cyclical development process works quite well. It requires all participants to leave their agend