How do you mitigate unnecessary meetings in your team?

Rod Bahmanyari
2 replies
Interested to see how everyone addresses this topic since everyone's dynamics are different. For me, it's very simple. We have a 3-step process: 1. Is it urgent? If yes, then move to 2. If not, then set a reminder and circle back if it becomes urgent. 2. Now that it's urgent, who is directly responsible for answering questions? If a few people come to mind, do not email- directly Slack and text them to get on a meeting or phone call ASAP. 3. Now that you're on the call, you have 3 minutes to discuss the problem and the solution. There will be 2 minutes between all of you to address the issue or elevate it if the meeting is about something extremely time-sensitive/important. And overall, if you feel like you aren't contributing anything to a meeting, just leave it. You won't get doxxed by anyone, just keep building and doing valuable work instead. You should never have to sit through a meeting for no reason unless it directly has to do with you or your onboarding. A lot of this stems from corporate culture, and as someone who started out building startups right out of university and during, I can never look at a meeting the same as how effective our 3-step meeting rule is/was.

Replies

Gurkaran Singh
Ah, navigating unnecessary meetings is like debugging code - strategic steps are key! Your 3-step meeting rule sounds like the perfect algorithm for efficient team communication. It's like optimizing code for peak performance!
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Eser Çetinkaya
Nice tips Rod! Actually we are on our way to launch a product to eliminate time wasting onboarding meetings of junior developers specifically. We utilize software analytics and different modules to guide juniors in several steps, without asking seniors to do. We believe that our tool will be very useful to avoid the problem you stated, besides your tips of course 🫡I would like your insights on this topic, considering your experience in product development.
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