Defaulting to Meetings (a chapter from my book)

During the recent crisis, I had the time to write a book about working from home with Revital Salomon. The book gives you tips and tricks about productivity and working from home. I'm attaching one of the chapters here, which is about what we hate the most, Meetings.

You can buy the book here on Amazon.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Talking To Strangers", he writes about "defaulting to truth". It's an interesting concept: when someone presents a story, and you don't have any indication that he is lying, you default to the truth. It's easier for people to assume that you are not lying, unless they have an indication you actually are, or unless they have a specific job that requires them to be suspicious, like a police officer.

The business world defaults to meetings. Why? Because, for some odd reason and against all proof, meetings are considered a way to solve problems, when in fact, what they mostly do is delay decision making. Unlike yourself, most people avoid making decisions because decisions mean being confrontational. More than that, making a decision means that you might be wrong, and you may need to accept blame if you chose poorly. Finally, making a decision means allocating resources, and who wants to do that?

No one wants to make a decision. So they stall by having a meeting where "decisions were made" (to die).

Productivity is on a scale. At the top is writing a document (or coding, designing, creating), whichever is your most productive and creative time. Exchanging an email with a client or service provider is a step below, a phone call is even lower, a video meeting is underneath that, and at the bottom, wallowing in their own dirt, we have the meeting and the unholy multi-personal meeting.

Productivity, in this case, is defined by how much actual work is done, and not how much time is billed. If you ever want to see a low productivity meeting, schedule one with a top-tier law firm. To every meeting they send a partner, an associate and an intern, at least. This is to increase billables, not productivity.

This scale of productivity should be your guide. Try to keep at least 75% of your time productive, dedicated to doing actual work and not just discussing the concept of work.

[Jonathan: I worked on a few big projects as part of a team. One of these projects required that we have a follow-up meeting every day. This was the least productive part of our day. For two hours we discussed what we've done, instead of just having reporting tools. A quarter of our day was unproductive by default.]

Meetings: The Last Resort

When was your last productive meeting? A meeting in which you actually created something of value. Can you even recall something like that? Most people default to meetings because they don't know how to deal with their dead time, or just because "that's the way it's done". When you are working from home, a meeting takes a hell of a lot more time than you want it to. Time works differently for you now. You need to drive, commute or walk to the meeting and back. A one-hour meeting comes at the costly price of three hours if you have an hour of traffic to and from the meeting. Time is your most precious asset, remember?

Meetings should be a last resort. Meetings will only be held if you have failed to resolve all the issues at hand by other means available on the scale of productivity.

The Agenda

Every interaction which requires your entire attention (meetings, phone calls and video calls are such interactions) should include an AGENDA. Agendum are items that are to be discussed and resolved within the meeting, and include relevant reading material.

A general request like "Can we meet?" should be emphatically refused. A meeting will only be held when issues cannot be resolved otherwise. This means that it should include the requested agendum and decisions. Usually, people come, talk and have no decisions. Each party can just repeat his side over and over until he wears the other participants out.

If you have an agenda, you know exactly what to talk about. In order to be prepared, it is best that every participant that has something relating to this agendum prepares a document to support it.

For example, if the purpose of the meeting is to decide and finalize the website design, the designer should provide a few options before the meeting, and during the meeting the participants should decide on the optimal functionality.

Video Conference

There is one, and only one, justification for video conferencing, even in the age of Covid-19. The only reason to have a video conference is if someone needs to display something to other participants. Any other reason is really "I just want to see that all other people are busy with this call and are not playing with their phones while talking to me".

Feel free to open your video display only in order to display your screen if you are working on a shared document or want to present something. No one needs to see your facial expressions or whatever it is you're doing when having work-related conversations. Be adamant about it and don't be afraid to stand your ground. A perfectly productive conversation can be held without you showing your face.

Calls

Phone calls should be planned in advance. Unless issues are super-urgent, don't call people without asking for the right time to call, and allot general time to answer your clients' phone calls. The reason is both productivity (calls break your train of thought) and billing (if you bill per hour). You need to list all calls with your clients in order to bill them for that time at the end of the month.

Timing your calls also means you can mute your phone and establish that you'll get back to people later. Talking to a client on the phone will be done only when you have the time for it.

People who are trying to broadcast an air of extra-productivity and availability will usually say "call me whenever". This is nonsense. They are abusing both their time and yours. They don't plan ahead and expect you to dump whatever it is you're doing when they call. These sort of people are usually not doing anything of importance, or they simply don't appreciate anyone else's time.