If you spend too much time in meetings you need to improve your usage of the function.

Standups, Scrum of Scrum and endless end-to-end meetings

Since the pandemic we are expected to attend meetings more than ever and it is killing creativity and making people depressed. For some the focus required to deep dive into complex issues such as development or business management gets broken with meetings that you do not need to join. You can attend meetings or you focus on your business goals - rarely can you do both effectively on the same day and rarely can you get the focus you once had.

One example is Daily standups. It is a one-size solution to a communication problem and shouldn’t be necessary with a team communicating efficiently. Daily standups leads to cutting projects into small daily tasks and it becomes a system of micromanagement which doesn’t provide an opportunity of non-verbal self reflection and focuses you into threadmill small task thinking never connecting with the project as a whole.

On the flip-note, being in meetings means you get to be in the room when decisions are made. Even if you aren’t an active participant, you get to at least listen in. Almost all problems are really people problems and people problems can only be solved by communicating with others. To succeed you need to make sure what you are focusing on is actually the right thing. I’ve never seen a way to figure that out without having meetings.

In the end, you are someone who gets things done and solves problems for other people and that requires regular communication with those other people. But, there’s a very simple fix if you believe you have too many meetings: decline them. If you don’t think you’re needed in a meeting, say so. Give a reason such as “I have nothing to add to that discussion.” or “There’s no agenda so I don’t know if I’m needed.” or simply say “I’m busy.” Make the people who invite you start to consider if you’re really needed.

Also, create your own “meetings” by putting blocks of focused time in your calendar where you’re unavailable to other people. Part of your job is to organise your time well. You can’t just delegate that to other people. If you’re saying yes to every invite and then you sit and don’t have anything to add, then you haven’t done your job properly.

People might stop inviting you and then you’ll have less input on things and less visibility to management (which mean you were needed in the meetings after all). Make sure you’re happy with that before you try this strategy.

Having a meeting interrupt my work ranges from slightly irritating to a welcome break. I get to interact with my colleagues, learn about what they’ve been doing, and understand more about what the team needs and what our customers need. Just make sure that you are in the right ones.

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