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Comment by comstock | Hacker News Reader

The first thing I want to say when I go into a group meeting is “how did we fail”.

If people are communicating well, slack, grabbing coffee, email then group meeting seem unimportant. When you need to setup a meeting, in particular to discuss a specific issue, it feels like something has gone wrong that we’re all not well aligned already.

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I think that's understandable as an attitude given the way meetings are actually utilised in corporate culture. Personally I've found group meetings to top out in effectiveness at 3, maybe 4 people. I would say at that threshold they can be incredibly efficient and effective versus online communication/telecom and important for building human relationships. But beyond that, any additional heads seem to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of a group meeting, let alone its efficiency. It doesn't take many faces before a group meeting is having an all-round negative impact. But I do strongly believe in the effectiveness of moderately infrequent, tight-group meetings. From my own, generally blessed experience anyway.

I don’t agree with this as a generalization - there are a lot of times where one needs to come to a consensus between various stakeholders, and group meetings are the best way to lay out the pros/cons, and come to a decision.

At bigger companies, group meetings take on a larger significance due to the business knowledge base being so massive that group meetings with lots of presentations become the best way to facilitate knowledge awareness.

Personally, I think if you’ve reached a point where consensus hasn’t formed naturally in some other venue then it is kind of a failure.

Trying to hash thing out in a meeting is ok as a last resort, but it seems less than ideal. Particularly when people often need time to form coherent ideas.

Group meeting with lots of presentations? Just sounds like my idea of hell really. I’d much prefer to read some notes on a subject and then later sit down with someone if I need to go into more detail.

Sometimes it is more inefficient to form consensus outside of a meeting or few I have found, and sometimes can have undesirable side effects such as bad politics arising - I’ve seen this plenty enough.

Hashing things out in a meeting is best after people have let various approaches bake individually - that is not in contradiction to the utility of group meetings.

To be clear, I’m very much against wasting people’s time - getting the right people in a meeting is super important for efficiency on both ends. I’m just highly skeptical that group meetings can be avoided for a lot of efficiency & human reasons.

but what if you don't get time to read the notes and no one is available for a sit down?

Then the info really wasn’t that important to your day to day job, was it?

Group meetings with lots of presentations are the absolutely worst way to facilitate business awareness. Nothing is worse than a meeting designed to have nothing actionable come out if it, and that most of the attendees have little interest in the “knowledge” being shared.

Generally I do agree, but would add a “how do we want to change?” to your question of “how did we fail?” A lot (not all) of real deep problem solving and innovating requires face time and more than 2 people

I keep trying this, but every time I have a meeting with more than 2 people, I get bad results.

The introverts don't speak up. The people with the most to lose/gain get loud. The biggest personalities get heard, not the best ideas.

I've vowed to never do a brainstorm meeting again. I'll do 3454353498890 one-on-ones to shop ideas around and iterate on them until everyone agrees.

Interestingly, this is exactly how the Japanese tend to do things.

Then you need to be more active in managing the meeting and ask the introverts to speak - I am assuming you are in charge of the meeting here

"hey you, the quiet one in the corner! Stop being so shy and tell this big loud arrogant idiot why he's wrong to his face!"

I exaggerate, but introvert friends tell me this is what they're hearing when they're encouraged to speak up in group meetings.

well you normally start doing this in less pressured environments.

I have when in charge of a high pressure shareholder meeting told the company founder to stop talking and took another speaker - after the meeting the founder said I was right to do so

Right, but you can certainly grab a couple of people and go for coffee. Or chat on Slack, or email.

It’s just having to explicitly set up a meeting means something has gone wrong in my opinion.

Unfortunately, human communication is hard. I mean, the tools for the job are great but the operators are shit. Meetings are a way to solve quirks in the communication pipeline and fix holes in it, it's the exaggerated desire to always have a meeting for whatever reason (possibly to show off power through control or decision-making) at whatever time that is wasteful and that's what people hate.

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