That sounds like a super interesting learning experience. What were the justifications for no meetings at all, out of interest?
Edit: Bleh, I misunderstood; just discouragement of meetings. It'd still be interesting to hear the reasoning (especially if it deterred people from holding meetings in favour of Slack)
A low volume of meetings, ideally visible to all staff on company calendars, with well-documented titles & purposes before the meeting, and transcripts/recordings for later reference afterwards (especially to handle any especially controversial decisions or discussions) is what I'd consider a 'gold standard'.
There's still the potential for people to try to back-channel discussions via in-person meetings and various other means, but at least it makes transparency the default, and allows questioning the paper trail.
Also: none of this should necessarily detract from the fact that, for some people, they may psychologically benefit from what we are discussing as 'pointless meetings' and airing their voice / asserting their status.
If that's genuinely helping those people, I think there's a place for it (even if it might not be what a purpose-driven engineer or mission-driven entrepreneur might want to see at their organization).
> That sounds like a super interesting learning experience. What were the justifications for no meetings at all, out of interest?
They thought it would increase speed of execution. Instead of finding the first available calendar slot that works for everyone 3 days from now, why not just have the conversation immediately in Slack? Get answers fast and then move on.
They also wanted to avoid gathering more people than necessary for longer than required. The idea was that engineers could quickly check the "@here" message, decide if it's relevant or not, and then get back to their work.
Good intentions, but it increased the volume of notifications immensely. Taking a single day off of work meant that I had to sift through well over 100 Slack notifications when I got back to my computer. A mix of @here, @channel, my name being tagged with 10 other people, or impromptu private message meetings. I uninstalled RescueTime because it was too depressing to see a minimum of 2-3 hours per day spent in Slack. I'd gladly trade those 2 hours of Slack time for 2 (or more) hours of efficient, well-run meetings.
Edit: Bleh, I misunderstood; just discouragement of meetings. It'd still be interesting to hear the reasoning (especially if it deterred people from holding meetings in favour of Slack)
A low volume of meetings, ideally visible to all staff on company calendars, with well-documented titles & purposes before the meeting, and transcripts/recordings for later reference afterwards (especially to handle any especially controversial decisions or discussions) is what I'd consider a 'gold standard'.
There's still the potential for people to try to back-channel discussions via in-person meetings and various other means, but at least it makes transparency the default, and allows questioning the paper trail.
Also: none of this should necessarily detract from the fact that, for some people, they may psychologically benefit from what we are discussing as 'pointless meetings' and airing their voice / asserting their status.
If that's genuinely helping those people, I think there's a place for it (even if it might not be what a purpose-driven engineer or mission-driven entrepreneur might want to see at their organization).