[Closed] Has anyone ever been to a meeting....

That will never happen, its like getting a flat on hot summer evenings next to a decent pub 😉

Absolutely. I used to get fed up having discussions with folk who would change their minds at a whim and hadn't discussed anything with other interested parties. Getting everyone in a room and thrashing it out is often by far the best means of making progress. You just need the skills to make it happen - or acquire the services of a good facilitator.

Very few in comparison to the volume of meetings I have been to!

Binners, are you at work right now? Complaining about wasting time?

If I feel I have nothing to add not gain from a meeting I make my excuses and leave. So in the majority, the meetings I attend are a constructive use of my time.

What is the point in sitting trough something that is wating your time, never understood where people moan about attending meetings when they have been pointless ones. Walk out

From a former senior Googlist, the culture at Google is against rubbish meetings:

* If you come to a meeting and don't think you can contribute, you can walk out

* If there is no agenda, you can walk out

* If there's no objective to the meeting, you can walk out

* If you think the meeting's pointless, you can walk ut

I'm liking it a great deal. Cuts down on the number of extraneous meetings. Side effect: alienates meeting jobsworths. This may be a good or bad thing.

Yes.

The key to good meetings ,is make them short and supply quality biscuits.
Our section would be chaos without our weekly meeting. 🙂

Yes

But I couldn't have been more wrong

Its not a complaint, its a genuine inquiry?

I've just got out of a meeting where out of 3 hours, I knew that about maybe 5 or 10 minutes would have been relevant to me. And I'm wondering if this is the case in other peoples experience?

like getting a flat on hot summer evenings next to a decent pub

Best puncture I've ever fixed

It's about a 90:10 split. 90% are useless, pointless wastes of time. A few contain real work. Doesn't mean I enjoy any of them.

when you work in a business where time is literally money, internal meetings tend to be very focused.
working with corporate clients, it is amazing how some organisations have their office-based employees in meetings literally all of the time. when do they do their actual work, or are they all just middle-management middle-men who "project manage" stuff?

[i]I've just got out of a meeting where out of 3 hours, I knew that about maybe 5 or 10 minutes would have been relevant to me. And I'm wondering if this is the case in other peoples experience?

[/i]

Agree, but often you need to be there for the full 3 hours so folk don't make 'bad' decisions - and would you have known which 5-10 minutes beforehand?

Try taking your mobile in with you, then start googling stuff…
This happens quite a lot at meetings I attend, oh yes it does. I found it quite odd at first but seems to be the culture where I am at present.
I’ve yet to succumb but on occasion I wish I had.
Thing is, most meetings I attend are actually specific importance with the Project I’m on, I’m a squirrel on information gathering and finding out stuff, so few meetings have been a TWoT

I once flew to the Isle of Man for a pre-contract meeting which it was 'critical' that I attend, only to be asked for our site supervisor's mobile number and to email across a copy of our method statement when I got chance. This was at 10am with my flight back at 4pm. Cue driving the TT circuit (great fun in an underpowered diesel hire car), various cafe stops and lots of reading the bits of paper I don't bother with.

Doesn't often happen in the NHS, that.

Increasingly, yes. Mainly because I have better things to do than get stuck in worthless meetings.

I'm very in favour of the Google approach (I believe also seen in organisations like Walmart).

You have to learn how to give good meeting. I rarely go to anything that doesn't have a published agenda and somebody chairing, that's almost guaranteed to get nowhere.

The trick is to get your bit early on the agenda then excuse yourself for an urgent phone call/pick up the kids etc, and make sure somebody sends you the minutes.

Using your mobile at meetings is the height of rudeness, I ended one once as a couple of techie guys were doing that.

Our daily stand ups are always useful, means that everyone know what everyone on the team is doing, where resources are needed and all that.

We're a bloody long way from being properly agile but i'm liking it so far!

Useless meetings last month involved an entire days sprint planning the other side of europe where i was assigned... the same user stories i'd had last sprint due to them being blocked, then another days 'work' there that was entirely pointless bar about 5 mins in the morning that meant i'd missed the next flight home.

I think if I was in a meeting and someone was googling on their phone, I'd throw something solid at their head

I'm liking the Google approach

As it happens, with regard to todays meeting - previously our entire dept was required to attend. This week we've managed to convince the powers that be that it would be time better spent, if just one of us showed up, then filled the others in on relevant stuff afterwards. This has taken some serious convincing though

make sure somebody sends you the minutes

another waste of time

Using your mobile at meetings is the height of rudeness, I ended one once as a couple of techie guys were doing that.

I do client training sometimes and was amazed at one client where the majority of the people being trained spent half of their time looking at their laptops doing other things. Your money you're wasting and feel free to pay me some more when you realise you don't know what you're doing.

Meeting with no agenda is a social gathering.
Our time is money so agendas tend to be formed as a list of questions with a space for answers and by whom, by when columns.

Worked for one of the early quangos where it seemed that I existed purely to attend pre-meeting meetings, meetings, wash-up meetings and all points in between.

Fortunately our new approach leaves more time to read STW. 😀

When the clock was running at hundreds of quid an hour, people tended to only invite me to meetings/onto calls whenever it was necessary, and boot me off as soon as possible. Those meetings were generally useful from my perspective.

Now that I'm not fee earning, I seem to end up in a whole raft of meetings about stuff I don't understand. I've been exposed to a whole world of meetings about meetings and people who spend more time trying to organise meetings than they do actual work.

I rarely go into a meeting without my laptop, so I can at least do something productive, like post on STW.

I did have one job, for a national organisation with a three-letter acronym, in which meetings were the most fruitful part of my day. Two reasons:

1) Access to tea and custard creams
2) Over-generous mileage expenses for travelling halfway across the county for most of them

I like the meetings where a lot of time is taken up discussing/sorting out where/when the next meeting will happen.

One manager I had used to make a big point about how I should attend meetings in her place as part of her delegating things to her managers and not being a detail mongering control freak, developing her staff etc yeah great excellent, which meant I had to sit through an hour of us her telling me exactly what to do and say in each meeting in response to each agenda point, then report back, so I had to waste 3 times the time of each meeting to make her look good, and she would still phone the relevant head of function (who she had just insulted by sending an underling so nothing was proper decided anyway) to make sure I had stuck to the program.

It can become an industry !! Especially if crazy people are involved.

I used to work for a very large company who would fly people from Edinburgh to London on a monthly basis to go through the accounts despite every single site they operated from being plugged into the central offices' finance system. This happened irrespective of good bad or indifferent results.

Im probably in the unusual position of wanting more meetings. Two years at one workplace, millions of dollars of projects, and we have never had one team or office meeting, no one knows wtf anyone is doing, morale is low, new colleagues haven't been introduced...

I rarely go into a meeting without my laptop, so I can at least do something productive, like post on STW.

I'm often the only attendee without a laptop. It's the meeting equivalent of going ready for a bare-knuckle fight, rather than regulation boxing....

Oh hell yes, if anyone has experience of rolling out over 8,000 laptops to mind numbingly stupid people, meetings like that regularly crop up.

And if another f---er pipes up to ask who "owns that action", I'll kill them.

We all do, muppets, and if you aren't intelligent enough to work out that's what you do, or what I do or what the finance guy does, then you probably should have asked a parent or guardian to come along with you. FFS.

We all do, muppets, and if you aren't intelligent enough to work out that's what you do, or what I do or what the finance guy does, then you probably should have asked a parent or guardian to come along with you. FFS.

he he 🙂

My favourite is when people decide to offer their opinion on legal issues. Normally followed with me suggesting how the use of pastel colours could greatly improve their site drawings.

yes, meetings which resulted in job offers !

I've sometimes had days entirely taken up by meetings, left me pretty much suicidal TBH.

[b]All[/b] our senior staff are to be given iPads, shortly. **** knows how many support workers we could employ with [i]that[/i] money. 🙄

The trouble with constructive meetings is you generally have a pile of minutes to write up afterwards, I'd rather just have the waste of time meetings where no one cares what happened for 2 hours...

My favourite is when people decide to offer their opinion on legal issues.

is their opinion that all legal stuff is a great big steaming horse-crapping waste of time?

My last meeting was held whilst sitting on a fridge drinking a half pint glass of tea. We sorted it out in time for Popmaster finishing.

when I work at GMP I used to decline all meeting requests that didn't have an agenda (which was pretty much all of them). a few poeple used to do things properly but they generally knew what they were doing and moved on when the government made it clear there was no future in the public sector.

I have to say, in general 95% of meetings I've attended have been constructive and productive.
We vid conf a lot too, which saves rattling around the country.
And the smartphone users tend to be holding blackberrys, which gives you a little hint as to the culprits.
I'm just off to another..
(sent from SG3)

Only ones that I chair and minute. 30 mins is the maximum duration.

I pick one topic; call only people who can usefully contribute; we discuss the topic and I listen to views; I decide what to do; I write it in an email to those who attended and send it.

Ideally we stand at a whiteboard and sketch the solution which I photograph with my phone and attach to the email. It saves typing.

Fin

Yes, but only ones inside my own workplace.

Many meetings should end with an honest appraisal of whether anything has been achieved and whether it is worth meeting again, rather than routinely scheduling the next date.

'Has anyone ever been to a meeting....'....No 😥

'Has anyone ever been to a meeting....'....No

me neither

How about a 'webinar'? I have an invite to one at work, what should be my reply and more importantly what the hell is it?! 😯

Webinar? Imagine the bastard off-spring of a conference call and a powerpoint. It's that good.

You can play with your phone and nobody will notice, though

Pointless in my workplace .
Working with a mouthy bully who shouts you down , and a directionless boss does not make for useful time spent.
Walked out of a meeting with the last shower.
" You got on a plane to Cyprus whilst the receivers were removing anything of value for a 2 week holiday ".
Her reply.- " Thats not true we didnt do that "
Me,"OK then Im not going to sit here and be lied to and i have more important things to be getting on with . "
" Please come back , we havent finished the meeting "
" I was wrong about Cyprus wasnt I "
" Yes "
" It was Crete"

Ideally we stand at a whiteboard and sketch the solution which I photograph with my phone and attach to the email. It saves typing.

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?

Company I used to work for would have a whole day long meeting once a month, the purpose of which was, I'm sure, to make me look for a new position without a bunch of meandering, directionless sycophants at the helm.

I had a genuinely useful and in fact essential meeting, a couple of months ago. It's set a bit of an unrealistic expectation tbh.

Critical meeting took place today. Be in Ireland for 9 am start.

Got up at 4:20

Got to Manc airport at 6.

Flew at 6:50

Landed at Belfast at 7:45

Director sauntered through security at 9:50.

Meeting started at 11

Critical information shared in 7 minutes, actions agreed in 5 minutes.

Why do people never tell all on conference calls?

Not in the best mood....

Most of my meetings are a good use - but that's because I hit them from the outset with a clear 4 step "elevator pitch":

- Why I am here
- This is where we are
- This is where we need to be
- We need to agree a solution to get from where we are now to where we need to be, and we need to do it today.

Too often meetings aren't focused, nobody takes control and forces the issue to a defined conclusion. They rapidly slide into little more than counselling sessions where people get to vent their opinions and discuss reasons why stuff can't happen, rather than ways it can.

This thread is ace.

50% of the meetings I attend are rubbish, some are interesting and about 20% actually enable something to happen. When I first started as an admin I did the room arrangements for a meeting and didn't order biscuits. The first 20 minutes were spent discussing whether to source biscuits, failing to find biscuits then discussing if someone should actually go out of the building into the town and buy some. They settled on a No in the end but for the next meeting I had 10 emails reminding me to book them. Attendees were made up of pretty senior local authority, local NHS and Police service personnel so I should have expected no less really.

Oh and one I went to today, the person that called the meeting was late then rushed in, sat down -----silence. So someone pipes up 'umm are you chairing, we didn't have an agenda' to which the reply was 'oh I can if you like' -----silence. Didn't have a clue what was going on so after 40 minutes of cobbling something together we gave up and left.

Does anyone ever drop anyone in the s*** in meetings. I did today because I was so cross at how useless they seem to be and then blame it on others

Exactly RichPenny!

The meetings im forced to attend rarely have agenda and consist of posturing by managers who don't know what they don't know. Nothing is recorded. What was the point?

My favourite is when people decide to offer their opinion on legal issues.

I do this quite often - despite not being a lawyer - bizarrely because I am basing my view on previous experience I am quite often right, not always by any means, but my experience covers a far wider range of issues than most specialist lawyers so I am aware of stuff they have never had to cover before - always best to stay open minded.

The best meeting I ever attended was when a project manager handed out pre written meeting minutes at the start then sat back and said 'this is what is going to be agreed, does anyone disagree? No one did or to be honest cared. Meeting over and one more middle management ego maniac satiated.

I'm posting this thread to my colleagues.

We've started to have "pre-meeting" (meetings about what we need to discuss at the yet to be arranged meeting) WITH ALL OF THE SAME PEOPLE INVOLVED!

Bregante, what about the pre-meeting planning meeting? I kid you not.

I like the meetings in my job. We often sit at our desks or talk to each other and discover serious problems with what we're trying to do. We have meetings to find stuff out, solve problems and figure out how to get stuff done.

It's better than sitting at your desk getting exasperated.

I do this quite often - despite not being a lawyer - bizarrely because I am basing my view on previous experience I am quite often right, not always by any means, but my experience covers a far wider range of issues than most specialist lawyers so I am aware of stuff they have never had to cover before - always best to stay open minded.

Sorry, I probably could have been clearer. To me, legal issues are different from commercial issues which have a legal element to them.

Commerical issues are generally helped by input from different people from relevant disciplines, however in the same way that I don't try to suggest a new way for a construction type person to build stuff, it can be counter productive when they suggest to the room that a bit of legal drafting sent over from clients/funders etc "looks ok" to them.

Some people just seem to use meetings as an opportunity to let everyone know how knowledgable they are about everything. My comment was more of a dig at those type of people, rather than those with relevant experience making themselves useful.

I used to work at a council where one of my senior managers would set an agenda, be really insistent that everyone came prepared to contribute effectively and then completely ignore everything she said and would talk about anything but the agenda items for the next 1.5hrs.
It was truly an art form of wasting peoples time and aggravating them, especially as every project she ran went over time and over budget.

I now don't have to go to meetings as I've been informed by my manager that my role isn't 'strategic' even though i develop and implement policies and procedures that affect the entire organisation. Therefore I now have to do my work from second hand information (often wrong) and have to go track down the people anyway and speak to them 1-2-1, which takes more time... <sigh>

Found it
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Meetings, the practical alternative to work!

I'm TDA (technical design authority) and SI (System integrator) on a large system development. I have spent days in planning meetings where my only purpose was "too keep the supplier honest" on technical issues. In 7 hours I spoke twice. I refuse to attend these now.

Pointeless meetings I won't add value to I decline politely, usually having questioned what value I might add.

Meetings i always attend, those organised by the a deouty project manager, who thinks he's a techie but in fact is a technical as a turnip, just in case he makes anymore stupid decisions. I think he did technical sales once lol

And yes I play with my smartphone in meetings when I'm bored, must be a techie thing.

I'm not reading all of the above crap because I'm too busy. 😉

In my old job I once had to extend a trip to China by 9 days so I could attend a meeting in Taiwan to discuss a customer's understanding of a technical document. I got there and he showed me our spec and a competitor's brochure and asked me to explain why their's was so much more advanced than ours for the same money. I told him he was reading the wrong product description.

Job done in less than 20 seconds.

Fuming.

Worked on a project at BAA some years ago. On ome occasion I flew to a meeting at Edinburgh airport, whereupon BAA couldn't supply any steps to get us off the plane. Rolled into the meeting 25 minutes late to be moaned at by BAA technical manager.

I took great delight in pointing out it was their fault I was late

I gave up attending internal meetings a few years ago - 95% of the time they are just a total waste of time.....