Tech Leader Pro

Leave your meetings (TLP 2024w38)

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I think we need to normalise leaving meetings that are wasting your time.

Notes:

  • Last week, I attended a workshop that had many people in attendance.
  • Like most such workshops, there was a minority of people contributing, while the majority was passively listening, at least I hoped they were listening.
  • In the first hour one of the attendees, an engineer, quietly and without fuss left the meeting and never came back.
  • He clearing decided the meeting was not relevant to him, so he simply left.
  • He done the right thing as he needed to get back to actual work, and as his manager it got me thinking about why this was a good thing.
  • I think we need to normalise this behaviour.
  • When people organise such meetings, they are tempted to pull in too many people, just to build out an audience.
  • For the attendees, they feel obligated to attend, even if it's not relevant to them.
  • So they turn up but remain passive: this is basically a waste of their time.
  • Unless you are actively contributing to a meeting, you have no busy being there.
  • Meetings should be full of drivers, not passengers.
  • I have now told my entire team they have my permission to leave any meeting that is not relevant to them. Just leave if it's wasting your time.
  • On the flip side, I will no longer accept those engineers complaining to me that they could not complete their work because they had to attend too many meetings: I am literally asking them to leave those meetings, and get back to work.
  • As a leader, attending meetings is my work: this is how I gain insights and feedback, and give direction. I have to turn up.
  • For anyone who is not a leader however, they need to be aggressively trying to reduce the amount of meetings they attend.
  • Just get up, walk out, and tell anyone who tries to stop you that your manager said it's okay to leave, see you.
  • What I am working on this week:
    • Moved greppr.org to a powerful physical server: 32 core i9, 64GB of DDRM5 RAM, 2x 2TB SSDs in a mirrored RAID 1 configuration.
    • The search and indexing performance has improved dramatically, check it out!

      • Notes and subscription links are here: https://techleader.pro/a/661-Leave-your-meetings-(TLP-2024w38)

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      Tech Leader ProBy John Collins