As managers, we spend a significant portion of our day in meetings. These can range from 1-on-1 meetings, team planning sessions, project status updates, roadmap planning meetings, and executive reviews. Surprisingly, managers spend over 30 hours per week in meetings, which amounts to more than 1500 hours per year. Even a slight improvement in how we conduct meetings can make a substantial difference in our careers.
Meetings are an essential tool for achieving progress in our work. Therefore, it is critical to equip ourselves with skills for conducting more effective meetings. One key consideration is to understand the different types of meetings and when to use them. By asking questions such as "What are the different types of meetings?" and "When should each type of meeting be used?" We can develop a deeper understanding of how to optimize our time in meetings and accomplish our goals more efficiently. In this article, I will provide a broad overview of the common types of meetings typically practiced in tech organizations. In a subsequent article, I will delve into the common failure modes of meetings.
- 1 on 1 - One of the most effective ways to discuss projects, people, processes, and personal issues is through regular meetings with your direct reports, peers, or supervisors. These meetings often take on a free-form format, providing a safe and open space for dialogue. By fostering open communication, team members can share ideas, concerns, and feedback, leading to better decision-making and increased collaboration. Whether discussing a particular project or personal issue, regular meetings offer a valuable opportunity for team members to connect and ensure everyone is aligned towards common goals.
- Team meeting - Regular information-sharing meetings are an essential tool for maintaining organizational alignment and keeping everyone up-to-date on important developments. These meetings are typically held on a monthly or bi-weekly cadence, providing an opportunity for team members to connect and exchange ideas. While these meetings can be costly and time-consuming, it's essential to keep them relevant, engaging, and on-schedule. By carefully curating content and encouraging participation, leaders can ensure that these meetings remain a valuable use of time for all participants.
- Execution review - Regular progress review meetings at the team or organizational level are crucial for maintaining visibility across all projects. One key aspect of these meetings is flagging projects at risk and diagnosing root causes to brainstorm solutions. To achieve this, it's essential to have key cross-functional members in attendance, leveraging the collective intelligence in the problem-solving exercise and resolving dependency issues. However, these meetings often have a large audience, comprising members from various teams or projects. Not every discussion will be relevant to all attendees, so it's important to strike a balance between going deep and broad. If a problem-solving exercise takes too long or isn't relevant to the entire group, forking a separate problem-solving meeting with key stakeholders can be an effective strategy. This ensures that those involved in the project or issue at hand can focus on the task at hand while still keeping the broader team informed.
- Staff meeting - A helpful meeting for internal alignment and debugging purposes. Depending on the size of the org, this can be the primary forum for conducting reprioritization or introducing changes to roadmap or getting high level status on critical projects.
- Operation review - Leaders of different engineering teams will convene to present essential health metrics and take turns in sharing their insights. This forum serves as a platform for exchanging knowledge, identifying and resolving issues, and establishing engineering excellence benchmarks throughout the organization.
- Architecture review - The highest forum for vetting technical decisions is typically led by a group or committee of staff engineers who provide feedback on major architectural decisions. The purpose of this forum is to ensure consistently sound tradeoffs are being made for design choices, consideration of new technology, adopting new vendors, prioritization of keep the lights on (KTLO) issues over product features, balancing short and long-term technical needs, among others, etc. The committee's objective is to promote an environment where all stakeholders can share their technical expertise and provide feedback that ensures decisions align with the organization's objectives and strategic goals. This collaborative effort among staff engineers results in the identification of effective solutions to technical challenges.
- Lunch and learn - Informal knowledge-sharing meetings are a casual and free-form forum for sharing insights about new technologies, designs, programming patterns, tools, and more. Typically, individuals take turns leading discussions, creating an interactive and collaborative environment. The audience for these sessions can range from a single team to multiple teams within an organization. In addition to the immediate benefits of information sharing, these meetings provide an important opportunity to build bridges within the organization. By bringing together individuals from various teams or departments, these meetings foster collaboration and facilitate the exchange of ideas. This can help break down silos, promote cross-functional learning, and ultimately drive innovation and growth..
- Roadmap planning - Roadmap planning varies across companies, with some organizations choosing to skip it altogether and take a more improvisational approach. While the rationale for such an approach may be well-intentioned, it often undervalues the benefits of planning. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct planning exercises at least once a year, if not more frequently, to ensure that the organization is moving in the right direction. However, it is important to avoid the opposite failure mode of excessive planning that leads to a lack of action. Striking the right balance between planning and action is key to achieving success.
- Roadmap review - As you execute your team's roadmap, it's essential to conduct a high-level tracking exercise to monitor its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This exercise typically takes a broader perspective than the project execution status review and is more closely tied to the organization's Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) or KPIs. By focusing on the bigger picture, this tracking exercise empowers leaders to ensure that the organization is progressing towards its overarching objectives and goals.
- Workshop - Although I don't have firsthand experience with this meeting format, it is typically utilized for devising product or business strategies that require input from multiple functional leaders. The meeting usually involves leaders from different functions gathering in a comfortable setting where they engage in trust-building exercises and brainstorm ideas for the business strategy. This collaborative effort typically sets the course for the product roadmap for the next 12-24 months.
- Eng All hands - A crucial tool for communicating important information to the entire team, reinforcing key priorities, and acknowledging exceptional performance is through all-hands meetings. These meetings often include a Q&A section at the end to address any concerns from the group. As organizations scale, it becomes increasingly difficult for information to flow seamlessly across all layers of management, making all-hands meetings an indispensable tool for soliciting feedback and ensuring that important information is effectively disseminated to the entire team.
- Team building - Why do we need a team building meeting?" one might ask. After all, doesn't professional conduct already encompass collaboration? While that may be true, when you have a diverse group of people all working towards individual and team priorities, conflicts and friction can arise. It's like a car that requires an oil change every few thousand miles to keep running smoothly - humans, too, need social interaction outside of work to maintain a healthy team dynamic
