How do people deal with meetings all day 15

[geotechguy1]

I've reached a career stage where it's not uncommon for me to have 4-6 meetings a day, at least for 2 or 3 days a week, often one hour each. How do people manage this? How do charge your time? It seems like people generally only budget for the meeting time (i.e. 1 hour meeting so they budgeted 1 hour of everyones time), but with meetings stacked up like this I basically find that (if I'm lucky to have gaps between the meetings) I basically have 15-20 minutes to prepare for a meeting before hand and 15-20 minutes to try and relax a bit afterwards, but certainly not enough time to actually do any productive work on another task.

I've been trying to decline meetings but then annoying PMs re-invite me or try and dial me in anyway.

Edited to say depending on the context of the meeting people also frequently try and have impromptu after meetings which fill up all the gaps between meetings (eg. if the meeting was between our team, a contractor, and a client, there might be an impromtu our-team only meeting immediately afterwards)

 

[tygerdawg]

Touchy subject. Responses to this thread should be entertaining.

Here are some real-life stories of how I was trained for meetings / how I managed meeting time.

Early career: worked for efficient company run by Engineers. Harsh Professional environment, no prisoners were taken. Meetings were considered toxic necessity. We all quickly learned to schedule a meeting with a firm Agenda & goals to accomplish, then control & run the meeting to accomplish the Agenda. Failure to do so resulted in massive shaming and embarrassment.

Mid-career: Boss jacks me up for not meeting my deadlines. I accounted for my time in 15-minute increments for the next month. Charted the time data and presented to Boss. It showed I was using 40% of my available time in meetings and most were not needed. Boss removed me from attending most meetings.

Later career: worked for R&D firm with a bunch of Ph.D.s who loved to have meetings for no discernable reason. I couldn't get my tasks completed because of too many meetings, most of which had no relevance. I started declining meetings and upset a couple of Project Managers. I explained how relevant they were to me, and how relevant my presence in their precious ego-building and responsibility-spreading charades were. "You can't decline my meetings!" "Oh, yeah? Watch me (click)." But I started getting my stuff done and moving the projects forward faster than anyone else. Six months after my arrival, the company had a RIF in which I was retained and my entire team was fired.

Now: I'm senior enough to get away with assertive behavior. Meetings are toxic necessities that must be minimized. I charge meeting time + prep- & tear-down time to force someone to pay for minutes consumed. I decline every meeting that cannot demonstrate to my critical thinking skills why I need to be there. If someone wants me at a meeting, the need must be convincing and they must earn my presence there. Then pay for my time in some manner that reinforces the toxicity and high cost of meetings.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Manufacturing Engineering Consulting

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[geotechguy1]

At a previous employer when I started declining meetings they made it so they could insert the meetings into my calendar without my being able to remove them

 

[MedicineEng]

Don't accept any meeting requests and just go to the ones that are relevant or you can't escape from (ex: CEO invites you).

In a typical week, I attend less than 50% of meetings that I'm invited to.

It has been working for me.

 

[cranky108]

I find that the meetings that are a waste of time, are the ones that critical people don't attend.
If you proceed without them (because they didn't attend the decision meeting), they halt the project and make people rework it to fit there viewpoint. Strangely these are the people that complain about too many meetings.

So we end up having several meetings, because one critical person did not attend.

Then again, attending useless meetings pays the same as piles of consultants review work, that was given with only 2 days to review. Crappy work results from inept project management, either way.

Yes I am one of the critical people. But things have improved since we can have meetings on-line. I can attend a meeting, while doing other things on a second computer screen.

 

[TheTick]

I don't get to lead many projects. Usually they keep me in the design seat because (as I was told) "anyone can make a Gant chart".

Last time, I started with some ground rules:
[ul]
[li]If you invite someone to a meeting, they should know why they need to be there.[/li]
[li]Meetings start on time.[/li]
[li]Meetings END on time! If meeting end time rolls past, you are entitled to get up and walk out without a word.[/li]
[li]Every task assigned includes info on who needs it, when, and WHY. This helped give a sense of purpose.[/li]
[/ul]

Nearly all of our meetings ended early.

 

[jmeeh]

In the world of remote work, I'd usually log on but barely pay attention and not talk and keep working. In the office, I sort of do the same thing except bring my laptop to the conference room or just sign into zoom/teams from my desk.

If you have to answer a question, you're there. If not, you can still get work done. It's worked for me so far.

 

[ctopher]

Eat a lot of beans, they'll stop inviting you.

ctopher, CSWP
SolidWorks '19
ctophers home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[geotechguy1]

"anyone can make a gantt chart" certainly fits in with my theory that project manager / director type people could all be replaced with a python script that says 'yes sir' to whatever clients ask for; or maybe a minimum wage employee trained to wear a nice suit and say 'yes' constantly.

 

[CWB1]

BTDT. I've been in many roles where i needed to attend large meetings for awareness and to support rapid decision-making. Half of the day might be meetings where I speak <2 sentences. Ultimately you need to understand each meeting's rules to know if you can multitask or not, and insist that every meeting be well organized and run. Senior managers tend to like attention and frown at multitasking, so I avoid it when they're in the room. OTOH I multitask in many lower-level meetings or when virtually attending, many tasks like running CAD can be done with little/no thought. When multitasking the bill is split appropriately for that time. Every meeting should have a set agenda, be fast-paced, start/end on-time, have published minutes, and have an organizer backed by someone with real authority to address issues. There should be zero-tolerance for unprofessional behavior and if a skipped meeting or other behavior delays/affects decision-making then that incident needs formally addressed and documented by management and HR, no exceptions. If you think your presence isnt necessary in certain meetings then that concern should be addressed by the team, but nobody should be declining meeting invitations unless their calendar is blocked with legitimate business. I give juniors the same advice given me - send a meeting invite or email once, if ignored send another cc'ing myself and their supervisor to address the situation. What may seem an hour's waste to you could involve a critical 5-minute discussion or decision-point, so you have to prioritize the team over your own schedule.

 

[TheTick]

It's typical and accepted in my circle to block out time as unavailable for meetings. Also it's acceptable to declare one has a "hard stop" at a given time.

One client has "meet-less Wednesdays". Thursdays can get a bit crazy because of all the work that was accomplished.

 

[Comcokid]

I worked at a company where meetings topics were typically hijacked from the main topic by several people to discuss non-relevant items. 5 minutes of real communications would be accomplished in 2 hours. Then they asked me to hold a couple meetings on a new product. I had the chairs removed from the meeting room. Meetings lasted 5 minutes. 5 minutes of communications was accomplished.

They never asked me to hold a meeting again.

 

[SWComposites]

Sigh. Endless meetings. Decline as many as possible, particularly those with no agenda. So pre-Covid would multitask on laptop in conf room. Now on zoom/webex, meeting goes on screen #2, phone goes on mute, work continues on screen #1 until need to actually interject something in the meeting.

 

[dik]

One place I worked it was not possible to put your phone on 'hold' to avoid calls. I asked the manager to enable that and he said that it was part of your job to take incoming calls. I found that if I dialed the office number the call was placed in some kind of a stack of phone numbers. If I put the call on hold, my phone was 'busy' and the message immediately went to recording.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik

 

[dik]

You also want to limit the size of meetings to four or five individuals.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik

 

[GregLocock]

For vehicle programs that share a common platform but have different teams working on variants the project engineers have a rolling meeting where you can dial into the the bit about your particular model at a certain time. This means there's a core of people who are there for most of the meeting, (and so can spot generic issues), but lets the rest of us get on with our real work. It isn't too painful. It does mean that if variant 3 has no particular issues then there's a bit of a thumb twiddle until variant 4 dials in, in theory, but compared with 80% of the participants zoning out (or more likely working while listening with half an ear) waiting for 'their' bit it is a lot better.




Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[AlmostRetired]

Sadly, often the only way to get important info out of clients is when they call a formal meeting to discuss a particular topic, and you take the opportunity to raise all the questions on other topics on that they have ignored in your previous e-mails etc.

But from experience I know it may be very different for the "corporates", where holding a meeting is seen by some as "ticking off a box", and an accomplishment in its own right.

 

[geesaman.d]

So if these meetings are internal, you have many options. First and foremost, if your company has a culture of low-performance / high-cost meetings, work with leadership and develop meeting policies. Such as: 1) Agenda is mandatory. 2) Decisions to be made, must be stated in the agenda. 3) Allow individuals to handle their part of the meeting off-line and in advance so they can decline the actual meeting when it makes sense. 4) Any attendee who does not tie directly into a decision in the meeting, is listed as optional. 5) Ensure that meetings are being scheduled with respect for existing meetings - e.g. not allowed to invite a person as a mandatory attendee if they are already booked during that time period.

If your company is resistant to improving the value of meetings, or has leadership that violate the best practices that lower employees must observe, just leave. There is no hope for that kind of leadership and inefficiency.

If these are client meetings, it's harder to control.

The waste and exhaustion in the remote work era is much different than before, but certainly the issue is real. If you can give more specifics perhaps we can talk in better detail.

 

[drawoh]

geotechguy1,

Zoom meetings are great. If the meeting does not seem to be your department, you resume working, and you monitory the conversation over your headphones. If it gets interesting, you go back to paying attention.

--
JHG

 

[GregLocock]

geesaman.d - your point 3 is exactly why agendas are good - and I do what you have suggested. So often I'll circulate a document solving whatever it was we were supposed to be nattering about. At the least it provides a foundation for discussion, usually it means things get done my way, more or less.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?