Comment by lolc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolc | Hacker News Reader

The endless rehashing of this list is tiresome. Sure these techniques are effective, but they exist because the behaviour they co-opt is often useful and desirable.

Not ragging on this piece in particular. It's just that people referring to this manual rarely add anything approaching guidance on how to expedite meetings and facilitate effective decisions. People shouldn't think of sabotage when something takes longer in a meeting, they should think of how the issue can be resolved quickly.

Tools I've found to resolve or prevent long discussions:

1. Ask every attendant their opinion in turn, so that people need not discover the other's take through discussion but have it explicit up-front. This is also very effective to break discussions where multiple people are constantly interrupting each other.

2. Make it clear when people talk about different things. "So you see technical issues #1, #2 while you see ethical issue #3?" Discuss the issues separately.

3. Keep the current best proposal for resolution visible for everybody, and change it as soon as anybody suggests amendments. Rarely split proposals into multiple variants, only if people favour clearly distinct options. Make the reservations explicit. "So you don't accept this resolution because it goes against (other decision)?"

And finally:

4. Accept that people can discover issues and change opinion during the discussion, this is an important function of a meeting after all. Make it explicit when it's happening though so everybody takes notice. If somebody keeps dredging up minor issues or matters already decided or discussed, ask them why they think it's relevant. Often it's enough to "add this to the minutes."

Most people can't run (chair) meetings well. Indeed, most people have never experienced a well run meeting.

A good chair makes it look easy. Anyone can do it. Oops, chair is out sick, need someone to fill in. Chaos.

Interesting, you view the list as an amusing take on things to avoid.

I view it as sport to keep me going at the corrupt, horrifically depressing companies I’ve had to work at, and have been unable to escape.

I don't see how acting that way would make the companies less depressing overall.

I think this could actually be a manual for promotions at such organizations.

It totally is. Another point is to make no contributions during the whole meeting but at the end be the last one to speak, make sure to summarize what everybody has said. the meeting is yours and you are automatically the insightful leader.

I have seen this done by a couple different people. They were not recognized as insightful, and more often recognized as annoying. They also often don't summarize properly but it's easier to let them conclude and pretend they were useful than to debate with them.

The more important thing is the actual meeting notes are accurate. (I also strongly believe that a meeting without published notes is largely useless and irrelevant, but that's a while other topic.)

Of course, that will never work in any sane place. The point I was making is all these "sabotage" behaviors are actually the sorts of things that get you promoted at toxic places.

I don't think the place has to be that toxic. In most larger companies there is a lot of political posturing going and these strategies all can be very useful under certain circumstances. The good players are just not too blatant about it.

Citrine or "ABC of Chairmanship" is a very good guide to formal meeting practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_of_Chairmanship

One reading is that if a lot of key decisions are being made in meetings you're already in trouble, and rather than trying to improve the meetings you should cut them down and -- as far as possible -- let individuals make decisions.

Obviously, this goes against some currently-fashionable ideas like "the team decides"...

Operational decisions, sure. The appropriate manager or executive should make those. But some decisions have to be made (or at least approved) by a board in many organizations.

Sure. But keep that set to the absolute minimum.

This list makes sense but it also reminds me why I hate the meeting culture. Instead of scheduled meetings people should have more informal conversations to hash out things and let them take as much time as needed. In scheduled meetings either developing ideas are interrupted because the time is over or they drag on for too long.

Funny thing is that in modern open office setups it's really hard to have a real conversation.

Meetings really should not be the place to "hash out things" as you say. Meetings should be where groups of people make decisions (this is advocated by DeMarco in Peopleware)

I would also add:

Have a deadline by which some task before the committee must be completed.

Have a single decision-maker for the committee.

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