We have tried various things, work blocks, no meeting days, etc. without ever really understand what the true root of the issue is.
I am curious how others have solved this dilemma in a very business driven world where things are to be managed.
As an engineer-turned-manager, I try to be respectful of people's time when it comes to meetings.
Basic meeting courtesy is mandatory:
- Schedule meetings at convenient times for everyone, preferably around natural breaks like lunch time. 1PM meeting after lunch before everyone gets back to work is good. 10:30AM meetings that break up people's morning are bad.
- Send a short agenda for the meeting in the invite. No agenda = no meeting is a good rule. Request agendas from others when invited to a meeting.
- Stick to the agenda and respect people's time. If a conversation goes on more than a few minutes but only concerns a few people, either have them take it offline or add it to the bottom of the agenda so you can cover it after everyone else has been dismissed.
- Keep things as predictable as possible. It's much better if everyone knows that meetings are generally scheduled around lunch time, always come with an agenda, and that off-topic discussions will be discouraged. Don't keep people guessing about whether or not a meeting will be productive.
Finally, some employees can benefit from a little coaching and mentoring about how to get back in the groove. If someone is struggling to get anything done on days with meetings, they will likely benefit from some coaching about how to best manage interruptions and get back into the workflow. They can also benefit from increased accountability around those days, which doesn't have to be painful if handled correctly. Some people have some "learned helplessness" around interruptions at other companies where they don't bother doing anything on days where meetings are on their calendar. Training this out of employees and setting healthy but reasonable expectations is very important.
As such, I've been pushing all of these discussions and meetings to tuesday afternoon, or maybe thursday afternoon on some weeks. Sure, there might be 6 or 8 different topics on that afternoon, but that's fine with decent meeting culture and some preparation.
- Get rid of as many standing meetings as you can, and then get rid of more of them (1 a week is max)
- At the end of every standing meeting, ask the group "Do we still need this meeting?"
- If you feel you need a regular standup, do it on slack/whatever-you-use instead and asynchronous
- The non-makers still need to be able to communicate with the makers, provide a clear chain of communication so that the smallest number of makers are disturbed in an ad-hoc fashion, preferably only 1 (usually a tech lead / engineering manager)
The last 2 VPs I've been under have had similar takes on meeting attendance: don't feel obliged to continue in a meeting if it's not providing value to you and you aren't providing value to it. This is, admittedly, way easier in COVID, where you can just drop off without much notice. But there's a polite way to do this in person (send an IM message to the meeting organizer politely saying you have other commitment/need to work on a near term delivery, and excuse yourself from the room).
Depending on the situation, I've found your-mileage-may-vary with trying no meeting days. Currently, as a principal engineer at a big tech company, it pretty much doesn't work. At smaller companies (or in smaller teams) I've found it works better.