Even more personal sanity for meetings and con calls — it’s worth doing!

In 2016, I shared five tips for bringing sanity to meetings and con calls. Earlier in July 2022, I brought you another five tips, and while that post was coming out of my head onto the keyboard, I ended up with three extras that would have made that post too long.?

Recap of the first ten?rules:

1. If it’s worth having a meeting, it’s worth reporting on the meeting.
2. Not everyone who can attend, should attend.
3. Set your agenda to fit the time allotted. Not the other way around.
4. If your meeting can be replaced with 2–3 emails, do it.
5. Respect your fellow attendees
6. A meeting worth having deserves an agenda in advance
7. If you call a meeting, show up for it.
8. If you’re going to miss a meeting you called, let someone know.
9. If you’re running out of time, schedule another meeting, don’t just extend the current one repeatedly.
10. Figure out what would represent success for the meeting, and focus on getting there.

But wait, there’s?more

11. If your meeting is a one-on-one, the more junior of the parties should drive the agenda and the time frame.

I’ve been on one-on-one meetings over the years where the focus was on my boss, or on me as the boss, rather than on what the minion* needed. It’s been a challenge the last few months, but I’ve tried hard to move toward being a listening manager on these calls rather than a rambling manager. Those of you who know me know how hard this has been.

Giving the minion the reins, rather than the manager, sets them in a position to get something useful and timely from you in the meeting. You may have something you need to tell them, like that 10% raise they’re getting or that they have toilet paper hanging out of their shoe, but keep your lecture to 20% or less of the time allotted.

And ask your minion how much time and how often they want to meet. You might want to put an hour on the calendar every week, but will that help them? or keep them from getting work done? I went from an hour a week to half an hour every other week, with several clear (and understood) expectations around that.

• If they need less time, we cut the meeting short.
• If they need more time, we either draw it out a bit or schedule longer.
• If they don’t need a meeting in a given period, they can cancel.
• I try not to cancel or reschedule unless absolutely necessary.
• I start the meeting with “what’s on your mind, what’s making you happy, what can I do for you,” or something like that. Then I try to shut up and listen.

This lets them own the process, and keeps the focus on their needs and their productivity.

If your minions need some structure, or if you do, check out my Andromedary One-On-One Template, available for the price of your choice (as low as $0) on Gumroad. I’ve found this useful in structuring my periodic self-reviews, as well as weekly status reports for my minions. If you pay for it, please leave a rating. If you have feedback on it, please let me know.?

12. Giving time back is rarely giving time back. It’s stealing less time.

If you own a meeting, you’ve demanded a given amount of time from your attendees. Finishing 3 minutes before the hour on a one hour meeting isn’t giving back time. It’s barely letting them get a beverage or a bathroom break before their next meeting. You should think of?:57 in an hour meeting as stealing 7 minutes, not giving back 3.

Over a decade ago, Google added a feature to their Calendar module to automatically schedule a biologically-friendly meeting. This meant that you could set a default half hour meeting to end 25 minutes in, and an hour meeting to end 50 minutes in. This was one of the best things Google has ever done, and I wish more people took notice and took action on it.

Many of us are in hour long meetings back to back all day, or parts of the day. But we’re biological and endocrinological creatures who, bluntly, have to pee sometimes. If you end your meeting 1/6 early, and even schedule it and stick to it, you’re respecting their biological needs and reducing the drift through the day.

And also, if you need to follow up from something after the formal meeting ends, give the other person a chance for a bio break if they need it.

13. Cisco Standard Time isn’t an admirable thing.

While I worked at Cisco, we had a pattern across most of the meetings I was involved with, whereby meetings would end late (see #12), and the next meeting would start late, and this would not stop until the business day ended.

I called this Cisco Standard Time* (i.e. every meeting starts 5 minutes late because the last meeting started 5 minutes late and finished 5 minutes late). The short stroke method in #12 (25/50 minutes instead of 30/60) would help deal with this. So would encouraging presenters or guests to honor the 25/50 minute timeline.

One of the biggest weekly presentations I was on, after 3–4 years, started moving from “let’s start at 5 after, and wait for people to join” to “we’re starting at 3 after” and at one point got to starting at 2 minutes after the hour. The organizers were very proud, and I was proud of them, but a lot of people didn’t understand, and most of the meetings kept on Cisco Standard Time.

The rules above will set you up to avoid Cisco Standard Time, and setting clear expectations of the same will keep you on track and your attendees comfortable.

So where do we go from?here?

I think I’m done writing about meetings for another few years. If you’d like to see my thoughts about anything, let me know in the comments, and remember to follow me here on Linkedin, subscribe to my feed on Medium, and follow rsts11.com and rsts11travel.com on Wordpress so you’ll get notifications of my latest updates all over the place.?

Footnotes:

In my first people manager role, I referred to my direct reports as my minions, and they took it pretty well. This was before the yellow critters from movies who shout BA-NA-NA, mind you. I still use the term, and it’s a term of endearment and not of derision.

Perhaps obviously, Cisco Standard Time is a context and observation reference, not an actual product, service, brand, or mark of Cisco Systems. It is not meant to imply any endorsement by Cisco either.