Posts Tagged ‘time management’

Eureka! The maker vs. the manager

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Sometimes I’ll just be sitting there minding my own business, when all of the sudden, WHAM! — something comes along that’s so obvious that it results in a “Eureka!” moment (it’s happened twice in the last couple of weeks, so expect another post just like this soon). This time the WHAM came while crawling through my RSS reader, when I found a blog post titled “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule“.

If you’ve read very far on this site, you’ll know I despise meetings. Horribly. I view meetings as a productivity sink; there’s no way I can be more productive in a meeting, and, many times, I am completely unproductive in a meeting.  I would hear people talking about their day being fully booked — and are excited about it! I couldn’t grasp why someone would be excited about it. These same people believe there isn’t a single problem a meeting can’t solve, when, in my mind, meetings only create problems.  Why are my observations about meetings so disjointed with these other people.  Is there something wrong with me? With them?  The answer is “neither.”

The “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” eureka! moment made me realize that there are two distinctly different types of people when it comes to meetings.  Worse, neither side understands the other. Nor do they try.

In order for makers to help managers understand, we must communicate with them. We must let them know how a single meeting could potentially ruin an entire day. Hopefully you can find a manager that has, hopefully recently, been a maker. They will become your champion. Remind them of the joy of a meeting-less day and how much they were able to get done, and that satisfaction that provided.

You’re not going to be able to get out of all meetings, unfortunately.  There are two things that can be done to assist in your goal of unfettered making time: 1) Minimize your meetings, and 2) Coalesce your meetings.

Minimize your meetings

Minimize both the number and length of meetings. Ask if you really need to be in the meeting, and explain the benefits of what you’ll be able to accomplish if you don’t attend. Do not fall into the trap of the default hour meeting time. Challenge the meeting organizer to reduce a meeting down to 30 minutes, or to 45 if that doesn’t work. Just because your meeting software defaults to hour-long meetings doesn’t mean you have to follow their cue.

Coalesce your meetings

Think of your calendar as a hard disk defragger display. Get the meetings to all form consecutive blocks such that you don’t have an hour meeting, an hour break, and then another hour of meeting.  That hour break in the Calendar. Source: library_chic / flickrmiddle is useless because you’re not going to be able to really get up to speed before you need to start slowing down for the next meeting. Hopefully you can coalesce all your meetings together in the morning, so you’ll have a wide-open afternoon to work. (Or maybe that’s just me; I wouldn’t like my prospects for the day if I knew my entire afternoon was filled with meetings.)

Move meetings to natural boundaries, such as the hour before or after lunch. If I know there’s a meeting scheduled at 2, I’ll postpone my lunch until 1:15 or so. Don’t allow a meeting to fall right in the middle of your morning or afternoon. However, do not try to create a designated “meeting zone” during the day. Some managers will think all available time within that block of time will need to be filled with meetings. Instead, create a “do not meet” time in which meetings cannot be scheduled, allowing the makers to make and the managers to plan their next batch of  meetings.

Understanding the manager mindset

Managers usually schedule meetings to get information of one type or another. Here are a few quick ideas to provide information without having a meeting, to shorten meetings, or to get uninvited to meetings.

Suggest an alternative to a meeting. For example, if you’re asked if you’re going to be free for a meeting, respond by asking to talk about it now. Without the formality of the meeting, and the inclusion of  unnecessary people (who tend to elongate the meeting), you’ll spend less time addressing the issue.

Try a preemptive strike. If you’re scheduled for a meeting, and you see only one issue for you during the meeting (you only attend meetings with an agenda, right?), go directly to the meeting owner’s office/cube, and give them the information they need, then excuse yourself from the meeting. Follow up with an email to all the invitees.

Do not attend a meeting without an agenda. As mentioned above, you should never go to a meeting that doesn’t have a published agenda. Without it, how do you know when you’ve answered the organizer’s questions, or fulfilled their need to know? By balking at attending an agenda-less meeting, you’re actually helping the manager get in the habit of creating agendas, which will be a win for everyone.  Once you have the agenda, become an agenda hawk. If conversation goes off topic, bring attention to it and get the meeting back on course, even if it’s not your meeting.

If all else fails, become a pain in the ass. If you’re continually getting invites to unproductive meetings from a single individual, it might become necessary to go negative. Start coming up with action items for the manager, forcing them to look through the eyes of a maker for a bit. Go medieval on the meeting’s ass by being a stickler for starting and ending times, and for sticking to the agenda (see above).

Hopefully with these ideas, your meetings will become less frequent, and those you still have will be less of a waste of time.

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Posted in Productivity |

Availability-based meeting anti-patterns

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

3350030807_2e7e0d0935_mIn a prior post, I discussed three meeting “anti-patterns” regarding the use of laptops during meetings. Here, I discuss two availability-based meeting anti-patterns.

There aren’t any conference rooms available

Have you ever tried to have a quick chat with a few people, but ended up talking in a hallway because all the conference rooms were full?  Well, then you’ve experienced the There Aren’t Any Conference Rooms Available pattern. Being a conscientious co-worker, you know that having a discussion with two or three other people in your cube can be distracting to those around you, so when such conversations arise, you go looking for a conference room.  But they’re all full. You then start making a second round, trying to find a meeting that’s about to wrap up.  It’s then you notice that one of the rooms is occupied by two folks, each of whom have their own offices.  With real walls, doors, and everything. Then you find another room with a team — and it looks like they’re having a good time! They obviously can’t be having a serious meeting. That’s because they’re not; they reserved the room for an hour, and it only took 15 minutes to finish up their business, so they’re going to stay in the room because it’s theirs! It’s the principle, after all.

Both of those scenarios are true (I was the one looking for an open room).  There are a few things that a company can do to avoid this type of problem.  First, make sure there’s a small room available that cannot be scheduled that is used only for short, impromptu meetings.  Also make sure that there’s a whiteboard in the room for brainstorming.  Next, make sure that people with offices (executives and managers, typically) use their offices in lieu of taking up a conference room (leaving the rooms for people who do real work ;) ). Lastly, institute a policy that discourages keeping a meeting going until all time has expired; if you finish all the agenda items, close the meeting and leave the room.

The Next Time We’re All Available To Meet Is In Two Weeks

Now, another ripped from the headlines all too true story: You have a bona fide need for a meeting.  You fire up your meeting scheduler, set the appropriate meeting length, create the most beautiful meeting agenda known to mankind, and the click the “auto schedule” button, and your jaw drops at the result.  You’ve just encountered the Next Time We’re All Available To Meet Is In Two Weeks pattern.  There are a few possible causes for this.  One is that your company has too many meetings. There should be no better way to demonstrate this to your executive management than by showing them the schedules of those you need in your meeting, and explaining to them that your critical meeting (it is critical, right? Otherwise you don’t really need a meeting) is being delayed by two weeks because of the excess of meetings.  Be prepared to show examples of meetings with dubious need, such as hour-long status meetings.

Another reason is that some of the people on your invite list, in an attempt to ensure they get things done, are blocking out chunks of time on their calendars to avoid meetings. (Full disclosure: I do this every so often, even though I know I shouldn’t.)  The reason for this is the same: your company has too many meetings of a dubious nature.  If meetings were less frequent, and the meetings that were held actually provided value, people wouldn’t need to block out their calendar to get things done.

Something you can do to avoid this altogether is to ensure you’re inviting the absolute minimum number of people required to have a successful meeting.  Are you really sure that inviting someone with a full calendar is adding value to your meeting?  Remember, there is more to a meeting than just sitting in a room and talking. There is preparation, and time required to act upon items assigned during the meeting; if someone’s calendar is always full, they will not have the requisite time to do either. Aside from lowering the chances of a scheduling collision, inviting the bare minimum should be considered as “the right thing to do” simply because you will not be wasting other people’s time by including them in a meeting in which they will have little to no input.

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Posted in Productivity |