Hacker News Reader

Comment by zapstar | Hacker News Reader

Does this discourage attendees from reading/thinking about the topic ahead of time?

If you’re the presenter or organizer, you’ve put all of this energy into a document. You’ve thought about it for days or weeks or months. And now meeting day is here, people sit down and read your document, and immediately, there is a discussion. Those people who literally just finished reading about the idea 2 minutes ago now have thoughts and opinions on it.

This happens regardless of the existence of documents, of course. But I wonder if waiting until the meeting to read the document encourages this sort of immediate feedback from people new to a topic.

View on HN

Yes, it does. But I don't think that is a problem...quite the opposite. When you're preparing a document, and you know you've only got a half hour some some executives attention, it forces you to really think through the message. It forces you to ask yourself questions, and find ways to make the point more succinctly. It's an extremely refined elevator pitch devoid of the influence of charisma and showmanship.

If you expect people to read before the meeting, there are two problems: 1) nobody will read before the meeting, and 2) the documents become too verbose and poorly thought out. If you don't expect any reading at all, you get presentation-led sales pitch that favors smooth talkers and charlatans.

I absolutely hated about 99% of the culture at Amazon, but not the document-led meetings. It's an amazing bullshit filter.

Generally you will have actually reviewed the document with wider and wider groups of people, gotten feedback and updated the doc. Many of the people reviewing the doc will not be seeing it for the first time. Others will.

Generally reviewing it with your local org is called "getting alignment". By this point in a big review the document should represent your team, org, or groups view to the next layer up who needs to approve.

If you're reviewing a doc with other people for the first time in front of your VP (unless they are your manager and this is like a 1:1) you've gone seriously wrong IMHO.

Haven written many 6-pagers, PRFAQs, and other written narrative formats then centering the meeting around the written documents, the writer should write for the audience and the allotted time for reading and discussing. New people may have less to contribute in the moment, but now they can read and research it later for contributions.

Generally a link to the document is sent out earlier in the day. That way folks who are inclined can read ahead and comment. The slackers still get time to read the doc at the start of the meeting so they’re not completely in the dark.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com