Ask HN: How do you hack meetings? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you hack meetings?

3 points0wis2 comments

I know many of us hate meetings. However, sometimes it is impossible to avoid classical 3-10 person meetings. I think we would all gain from making them better, so I feel it is worth asking : How do you make meetings more efficient for your team or your organisation ? Which actions do you do to contribute the most as an leader or as a participant ? Any ressource to improve the fastest on the subject ?

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Pretty much every developer I've worked with who claimed to hate meetings also believed they were exceptional and often refused to admit when they were wrong. This may be a coincidence of course, but I suspect you only stop hating meetings when you understand the benefits of collaboration and develop a willingness to accept other people's input on whatever you're working on as a constructive and positive thing instead of a negative force designed to hold your brilliance back.

As a first step I would recommend to anyone who hates meetings should ask themselves why they hate them, and if it's really the meeting that's the problem.

That's not to say there's no such thing as a bad meeting. Never have a meeting that doesn't have an agenda and a goal. If you're leading, keep it focused and on track. Leaving a meeting without a resolution shouldn't happen.

I would agree with most of this, I'd also add that meetings are usually organised because there's a communication gap that needs filling. If you can find a better way to communicate about the meeting topic than a meeting then suggest it. It's everyone's job to make sure meetings are as good as they can be. If you hate meetings, you're probably in lots of meetings which are badly run, or don't provide consistent and valuable outcomes. The solution isn't to be in less meetings, it's to make the meetings better.

Once you spend time making meetings as good as they can be, it becomes easy to figure out the ones where there's a lot more input than outcome. At that point no one will mind if that meeting doesn't happen or gets questioned.

If you find yourself in a lot of adhoc meetings, then it's likely a symptom that some other communication forms aren't providing high enough signal. Again, that's a thing anyone can put energy into improving.

Agendas, goals, focus, and good time keeping are all things that can be done to improve the outcomes of a meeting. They just require a bit of effort.

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