Jeanne Henry (Senior Project Manager at Tighten) and Molly Fisher (Project Manager at Tighten) join us this week to talk about why meetings don't have to suck - and what you should look for in a good meeting.
Jeanne Henry (Senior Project Manager at Tighten) and Molly Fisher (Project Manager at Tighten) join us this week to talk about why meetings don't have to suck - and what you should look for in a good meeting.
Dave Hicking:
Welcome to Twenty Percent Time, a podcast from the team at Tighten, a web development consultancy that specializes in Laravel, Vue, React, Livewire, all kinds of stuff. My name is Dave Hicking, and I'm here as always with my amazing cohost, Zuzana. Zuzana, how are you doing today?
Zuzana Kunckova:
I'm doing very well, thank you, Dave. How are you doing?
Dave Hicking:
I'm doing wonderful, despite it being a gloomy, rainy day, but that is very exciting. This is becoming a weather podcast, which I'm super excited for. No, it's fall is here, it won't be hot after this rain, so I'm doing wonderful.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Yeah, it is. It's lovely here. I can't complain about the weather. It's not hot, it's not raining. It's kind of sunny, but not too sunny, so I love it.
Dave Hicking:
That sounds great for-
Zuzana Kunckova:
Just perfect. Yeah.
Dave Hicking:
... good for England. Yeah.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Yeah, I know, right? And very unusual weather this year, so I'm not complaining.
Dave Hicking:
This week we are joined by two special guests. This might be a first. Four people on this podcast. Everybody strap in. We are joined this week by our two fabulous project managers are Tighten Jeanne Henry, senior project manager at Tighten is here. Jeanne, how are you?
Jeanne Henry:
I'm doing great, thank you.
Dave Hicking:
Excellent. We are also joined by Molly Fisher, project manager at Tighten, who is eagerly awaiting her new puppy to arrive at home, and if I'm lucky, we're going to get interrupted by puppy excitement, but I fear that's not the case. Molly, how are you doing?
Molly Fisher:
I'm doing very well. I'm very excited to be on this podcast and to have my new puppy, Dan, come home to us to add confusion to the Tighten team.
Dave Hicking:
Now, Molly, real quick, this is a side tangent just to clear up for folks who listen to this podcast, you are not naming this dog in an honor of Tighten's CEO, correct? This name has come with the dog.
Molly Fisher:
That would be a great bit of my application and interview process to say in honor of trying to get this job. No. He is named in honor of Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump, so yep, he is Dan, and he will be Daniel whenever he's in trouble.
Dave Hicking:
Excellent. Oh, and have you already started to work on a middle name for Daniel when he's really in trouble?
Molly Fisher:
Well, I think I might need to put that to the Tighten Slack just to workshop it of what would be the best three name, call across the house sort of puppy name.
Dave Hicking:
These are the kind of important questions everyone's missing in the Tighten Slack by not working on Slack. We should include that next time we run a job ad. You too can help pick a puppy's middle name. All right, we could talk about dogs and weather all day. Let's dive right in. What are we talking about this week? This week we are talking about something that everybody who's listening to this has to deal with, but I'm guessing everybody who listens to this, probably they might have some feelings about. We're talking about meetings this week. More specifically, the idea that you actually don't have to hate meetings. They maybe shouldn't be terrible. It's a working title, we'll workshop that and figure that out as we go on this episode.
Dave Hicking:
To talk about this, I wanted to obviously have Jeanne and Molly on the show today with Zuzana and I, because frankly, they run a lot of meetings and they do it very well at Tighten, so I want to dive right in. If you ask most people, if they like another meeting to be added to their calendar, they are not exactly excited by this idea. We deal with this with clients all the time, but I think the whole idea of this podcast is not only you don't have to... Not only do you not have to hate meetings, but they might actually be good at times. I know this is a shocking hot take. Starting off very spicy, meetings could be good. For both of you, what do you think makes a good meeting?
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of people do not like the thought of meetings, but if we specifically think of the idea of what makes a good meeting, I think in its simplest form, it's probably can it benefit from discussion? Do people have a place to engage in a meeting? I think a good characteristic of a meeting is having a clear purpose and objective. Why are we meeting? What are we going to discuss? And again, is that actually a discussion point or is that something that maybe we could communicate in another way where a meeting wouldn't be most beneficial? Not only does it have an agenda, but is there a facilitator of that agenda?
Jeanne Henry:
I think when you're drawing up an agenda, it helps you to focus on whether you're using people's time intentionally on a call. Everyone that you've kind of invited to the call, if you're the facilitator, for example, do they have an opportunity to chime in and add to the discussion that you're having? Are they going to learn new information or be able to engage in some manner? And if the answer is no, that probably wouldn't make a good meeting. A good meeting will also have clear outcomes, aim to close the feedback loop. It will retain focus, so part of that agenda, so things aren't feeling circular or unhelpful. And there are exceptions to every rule, but I think most good meetings probably won't be more than an hour, because there's just a cap where people are sitting down and they just cannot take it anymore, so short meetings are always nice, but if it's a longer meeting, try not to make it above an hour. And a good meeting naturally ends on time.
Dave Hicking:
I want to attend this meeting. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you Jeanne. Molly, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Molly Fisher:
I think going with the idea of the picture that Jeanne has painted for a good meeting, imagining on the flip side where you are starting with that idea of if someone says, "Do you want to have a meeting or can I throw this meeting on your calendar," to any person you're talking to, even if it's a loved one or your best friend, no one wants to hear those words and it immediately makes you question why you need to gather. But if you instead say, "Can we discuss insert purpose here?" It gives a purpose to the meeting.
Molly Fisher:
To have a good meeting, that is a meeting with clear purpose, so what Jeanne's saying about having an agenda, a clear reason why we need to gather, who needs to be on that meeting, and it be a distinct length of time, instead of it being something that is unquestioned that a meeting will solve this problem, but then we're not discussing why we need to have this meeting, or it's a standing event on our calendar. I feel like that's something that we can question about how we approach meetings in order to identify what is the purpose of every meeting and why are we having them, and therefore, how can we make it a good one?
Zuzana Kunckova:
Well, I'm going to pick up on that because you talk about a purpose of meetings. The whole idea of the podcast is that meetings don't have to suck and that they can be good, but are they necessary? Is there a way not to have a meeting?
Jeanne Henry:
Absolutely. Knowing, especially imagining... Let's say we had a 40 hour work week and it was only full of meetings. Do we think that we're getting 40 hours worth of work done? Maybe we're discussing 40 hours worth of time, we're definitely contributing to our work environment in that time, but we should hopefully not have our days filled with back-to-back-to-back meetings. We want to have those be concentrated points of discussion, purpose, meaningful connection with our coworkers and our clients to get a lot of requirements down or questions answered, but to know that we can also do a lot of that asynchronously. We don't need to do every single item in discussion with another person, and in fact, we may not come up with our best ideas if we are solely thinking that if we're on a Zoom call for hours at a time, or even if we were in a physical office with one another sitting in a conference room to talk about things.
Jeanne Henry:
Sometimes our idea, our best ideas are our most thoughtful editing or best requirements. Writing comes when we're alone and quiet and able to document and then able to give someone else the space to review, edit refined. And that's whenever we should come together to discuss because we both have something to contribute. So this is kind of taking on its head the idea of let's have a meeting to review this new information I just gave you. It's instead saying let's, let's make it the most purposeful one hour tops meeting that we can have that it is, it's using our communication skills to focus on the purpose of the meeting separate from that acing communication.
Dave Hicking:
Jeanne, one thing I want to pick up on that you mentioned when you answer the first question is agendas, which I'm sure some people maybe sometimes feel like, "Oh, do I really need an agenda? We all know what this meeting is for." But you think they're important. I also agree, I think they're important, so let's just ask the obvious question, why are agendas important? What problem do they solve for people who are trying to hold a meeting? Why can't they just do slash Zoom in a Slack channel or put that meeting on someone's calendar and go? Why do we need agendas?
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I think agendas help to solve for unopened chaos that a meeting can turn into.
Zuzana Kunckova:
I like that.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah, I like that.
Jeanne Henry:
I think a lot of times, like Molly touched on, people can just say, "Let's meet." And I think the knee jerk reaction is, "Let's not." Even if it's a friend, what do you want to meet about? If your mom calls and says, "Call me back." You're like, "Oh. Oh my gosh, why? What's happened?" I think an agenda helps to define that purpose and a heads up around what will be discussed during the meetings. I think a lot of times as a project manager, you might think of an agenda as a checklist for a project manager, as something that we do, and we definitely do do them, but I don't think that they're a static document that you wouldn't want to share around.
Jeanne Henry:
The purpose of an agenda is to give everyone a heads up, so if you're at a kickoff meeting with a client, you don't want to surprise them with the kind of topics that you're going to cover. You don't want to say like, "Hey, would you walk me through your app?" And the person isn't on the call to do that. Agenda makes sure that people on the call are the right people, and they give the opportunity to come prepared and make decisions rather than be surprised. It allows everyone to use their time intentionally with focus around the topics. Also allows you to time box conversations. At the end of the day, I think agendas mostly help to avoid a meeting to feel unnecessary or aimless, so you can work, agenda can work to prioritize discussion points. It can help yourself plan ahead and create focus, and again, just be sensitive of everyone's time. Everyone's time is valuable and you want the meeting to be efficient and purposeful, and agendas create that structure around it.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Yeah, I like how you said that the meetings need to be purposeful, intentional. You don't just want to waste people's time. You also mentioned that I think the best time you said up to an hour. Often when you mention, when people talk about meetings, they think about one kind of meetings, but there are different types of meetings. I'm not a pm, I don't know, so are there different types of meetings or is it just the whole, you say a meeting is a meeting is a meeting?
Molly Fisher:
Ooh, no. I would say what Jeanne pointed out of, we want to focus on an intentional meeting, and I think that often imagining a typical dev agency's, like each person's calendar is probably filled and they probably have several meetings on their calendar with recurring invites where you just think, "Well, this is never going to go away," or, "This is that meeting that always exists." They all end up becoming routine, so we might have a kickoff meeting, we have get-to-know-you meetings, we have daily standups, we have weekly check-ins, we have requirements meetings, we have wrap up meetings, we have all these that even just listing those out and we say we have an engagement that's X number of weeks long, well, shoot, did we only meet the hold dang time? That sounds like a lot of meetings.
Molly Fisher:
But if we framed it that way, instead of saying, "What is the goal behind having each one of these?" We want to have a kickoff meeting means that we get to know the client, we get to establish that trust with them. If we have maybe a check in call within our team, we are getting to know how we want to solve problems in possibly a more efficient and jumpstart way compared to only via Slack. Does that mean that needs to happen every day? I'm not sure. This may bring up the question of daily standups, but knowing... Do we want to demo things to the client? Do we want to ask them big questions in probably their jampacked schedule so that way they can sit and focus on this project?
Molly Fisher:
Well, that's probably a good time for a weekly check-in meeting, but if we focus on the types of meetings instead of the purpose, if we work backwards and understand each of these has a clear purpose, that's why we're wanting them to be on the calendar, then it adds to the value of why we're doing them. I think on the flip side, it can get really hard whenever, especially in Agile or different software approaches to say, "This is how it has to be done without questioning or understanding the value of the goal." And if that's really the best method... Our approach at least at Tighten is to make sure that we're getting the most purpose and value out of every single meeting and everyone's time is honored.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah, building on that, you talked about some different types of meetings and trying to be purposeful of people's time. Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly when. Basically, when does email or when do Slack conversations start to pile up so much that actually a meeting would be better versus trying to avoid the well worn stereotype, but there's truth behind it, this is another meeting that could have been an email? You want to avoid that kind of situation too, right? Do you have any guidelines or best practices, rules of thumb? I don't know, insert phrase of choice. Is there something where you're like, ":Okay, when I see this, actually we should get a meeting?"
Molly Fisher:
Yes. I would say at the point where we're either talking past each other, so let's say we're trying out some of those initial attempts, because we don't want to just spring a new idea or topic on another person, we want to have an intentional conversation around whatever content or whatever topic that we need to meet about. If we've already broke the topic and we've attempted to communicate, we've crafted that message to communicate our intentions, be clear about links and resources and follow up questions they may have and all of that, we've prepped and we're still talking past each other, or like I said earlier, it's the time where we've given that information to the client, but we know that they need to engage in it deeply, but they have a lot of stuff going on.
Molly Fisher:
We're working on their project 100% of the time, they're able to sometimes only devote part of their day or their work week to jumping in on a product discussion, so having them review it and then knowing, hey, I think it would make the most sense for us to just have you talk through your ideas instead of typing them out to us. I also think it's important to just explore that it's not the binary of either it's a single written message or it's a meeting, because we can have those asynchronous conversations. We can also have emails, but goodness gracious, we're having a conversation over Slack. Could we have a huddle where we don't even need to have a formal talk? Could I send you a Loom video and record a screen share? Could I walk through this? Could I use any one of the tools like Scribe where it documents exactly what's happening in order to pass info along to you?
Molly Fisher:
And at that point it's making sure I'm giving all the communication I need to tee up the other person to give me communication I might eat in return, or that they can have a thoughtful response, and that's when you're going to get a really fruitful meeting. Not trying out any of those in-between methods of communication can be a way to... It's almost as though you realize you're jumping from one to the other, thinking that only a meeting can solve it, or yes, this could definitely be solved by a Slack, but we have a lot of other ways that we could explore solving our problems.
Dave Hicking:
We've talked about agendas, we've talked about being purposeful of people's time. Going back to the very first question, what makes a good meeting, I can't remember if this was Jeanne or Molly who said this, but I think it was Jeanne, judging by Molly's points. Thank you, Molly. Seriously, thank you. I want to talk about the importance of facilitation, because Jeanne, you brought that up and I think that's an underrated aspect of thinking about a meeting, because I could tell you personally, I have PMed projects, and at Tighten the way that we do it, sometimes the PM is not just taking notes, but also kind of running the show on a weekly check in call.
Dave Hicking:
But sometimes at Tighten it's the lead or the other devs who are doing more the demoing and running the show, which allows us to, okay, great, we can take notes or whatever. It's hard to both facilitate and lead at the same time, but I don't think people think about facilitation that way. Jeanne, is that along the lines of what you were thinking of in terms of the importance of facilitation or do you... I'm springing this on you, I know, but do you want to talk a little bit more about facilitation?
Jeanne Henry:
Facilitation is a referee in a sense.
Dave Hicking:
Oh, okay.
Jeanne Henry:
I do agree that it's hard to facilitate a meeting and be fully present and actively acknowledge things, and then also be the note taker. I think if you're the key facilitator, whether that's leading the presentation, whether that's taking a discussion and whatever form that takes, it can be helpful to ask somebody else on the team to take notes so you can be fully present and an active listener. But I think the number one kind of job of a facilitator is... Not to be so strict about agendas, but just to keep things focused. Are we discussing what we came here to discuss? Are we working together to solve the problem in front of us? And without a facilitator, without somebody keeping track of what you want to discuss and the outcomes, you can get astray and go down different routes, and they may be productive in their own right, but you might not have the answers to the original questions that you wanted.
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I definitely think it's really important for somebody to take ownership of the meeting, and it's helpful if the person requesting that meeting is taking the ownership. More often than not, I think that is the project manager, but it might be the lead, it might be a pairing session, somebody might have an issue, like a technical issue, and they might request an ad hoc meeting, and because they are aware of the problem that they're having, they'll be able to present the problem to their colleague and go about it. I think facilitating is taking ownership of the agenda and trying to steer it in the right direction.
Dave Hicking:
I love that concept of ownership because it really, I think, pairs so well with agendas to a certain degree. You can have facilitation without agendas, I've seen it many times on meetings, but if you have an agenda, but then there's nobody who owns that meeting, then you just end up in a world where an agenda is a wishlist. And then if the agenda is just a hopeful but the agenda's not actually what happens in a meeting, well, pretty soon people don't pay attention to the agenda. Now you've just got these kind of amorphous meetings.
Molly Fisher:
And on that idea, I think people love direction. If we are -
Dave Hicking:
I want to isolate that, and we're going to... I'm just kidding. I might ask you to expand more on that in a second, but keep going, Molly.
Molly Fisher:
Knowing an undirected gathering is very awkward, it can feel as though we're having it be a very natural flowing, chill meeting, but without an agenda and/or without a facilitator to guide that discussion, it can feel aimless, especially for the person that said, "Why the heck is this meeting on my calendar anyways? I only have to talk at agenda point four." And if you're aimless, it feels uncomfortable. Maybe not for everyone, but a facilitator can help with, in a bit, almost the improv of what can happen in a meeting of pivoting, redirecting, focusing everyone and reminding them, because sometimes that is what happens, is that we need reminders that we have X number of minutes and we have to cover X number of topics, and to have that guidance instead of saying, "Well, we just hope we get to it."
Molly Fisher:
It doesn't honor everyone's time, and instead it reminds us that there might be the person that's a little bit more type A or focused on that agenda, but they're not in the role of facilitator and the facilitator isn't taking that on, do you want someone else to have to do that and say, "Hey guys, let's get back on topic." Have a facilitator already in place, have that direction already decided on, and then it will be a natural outflow of how to have that meeting not be uncomfortable and have a purpose for everyone.
Dave Hicking:
The idea of meeting facilitation being like improv unlocked something in my brain. I was just like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. First of all, how did I never make that connection?" But also, I think maybe that explains why some people are mildly terrified of facilitating a meeting. Just like improv is not for everybody.
Molly Fisher:
And embracing the awkward sometimes. It's okay if we can all acknowledge, yep, that's not how that went to plan, or man, that was a... Yep, my chair just squeaked at just the right time. Acknowledging those moments that we all just encountered, or we all just went off topic. But it's the polite guiding. It doesn't have to be always be stripped and stern, but it can be one where we can all enjoy our time together while getting some stuff done.
Zuzana Kunckova:
You talk about enjoying our time together. All this time I've been listening to you, and all I think about is Zoom meetings. I know that's not what you're talking about, you're talking like it can be in-person meetings, Zoom meetings, but because since the pandemic and the world as it is right now, a lot of it is about Zoom meetings, so how would you deal with Zoom fatigue? I don't think it was even a thing before the pandemic, but it definitely is a thing now. You talk about enjoying yourself, so how do we enjoy ourself and then combat the Zoom fatigue?
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I feel like meeting fatigue and a lot of it is on Zoom because most of our meetings are on Zoom, especially in a remote setting, but any kind of meeting fatigue I think has always been present in the workplace, and especially so when many people were using any excuse to go on Zoom just to meet over friends, to have a drink or anything, every aspect of your life was on Zoom. But in the workplace, I think if you are getting invited to a lot of Zoom meeting, it's good to ask yourself generally, am I participating in this meeting, and do I have enough heads down time to do my work? And if the answer is no, that might be, maybe you don't need to go to those meetings, but let's assume that the answer is not no to those, that the meeting is actually a great use of your time and you're still feeling fatigue.
Jeanne Henry:
I think in those cases, I think a lot of people find, and I've definitely found in my personal instance, that sometimes if you're on meeting after meeting that's on camera, and having those very close face-to-face chats, a lot of eye contact, it just takes a lot more energy, so using an opportunity to turn the camera off could help reduce some of that fatigue and pressure. I think just be mindful of where you are in the day, so sometimes I will be glued to my chair for hours and hours and not get up, so just thinking about where that fatigue is coming from and stepping away from the desk, whether I want to get a cup of coffee or get some fresh air, or just taking 10 to 15 minutes for myself to do whatever will just relieve a little bit of stress. If you have back-to-back calls, speaking up for yourself and trying to ask for a break in between those calls.
Jeanne Henry:
When we're on calls, there's not really an opportunity to go boil some water for tea or to go to the bathroom and we're all humans and we need to do these things, so making sure that you have a break can be helpful to reduce fatigue. I think working with the facilitator of the meeting to plan around your role for the meeting, because a lot of times I think fatigue comes from you don't know what your role is going to be during the meeting. You might be nervous that you're going to be put on the spot in front of a client, and I think if you can talk to the facilitator and eliminate those fears or just talk through what to expect for yourself on the call, then that can help reduce fatigue.
Jeanne Henry:
And again, working to see if there's an opportunity to get really crazy and switch all of your meetings to the morning, if that's a time where that would just be better for you in your head. Do it in the morning, then it's out of the way and it's done. And then also just trying not to do too much on one call. I think Dave, Molly and I, we were all on a call this week and there was this separate Slack conversation going on. We all really wanted to respond to it, so Molly was noticing on the call, it I was like, Jeanne, Dave, Molly, everyone typing. That's a thing. I was feeling fatigued that day, which I guess I wasn't, but if I was, that would be a thing not to do. Mute your Slack, do not look at other messages while you're on the call. Just try to be present on that call so you're not trying to focus your energy on many things.
Jeanne Henry:
What I found helpful for me personally, and this is possible because of Tighten, when we have our Twenty Percent day, if I've had just a crazy week, I will do my very best to not do any camera calls on a Friday and maybe not any calls at all, because it's just nice to have that time just to not feel like you're put on the spot. Yeah, just feeling like you can arrange that day. And then I think lastly, Molly kind of touched on this a little bit, but just changing the pace of your meeting. Zoom has themes, emojis, you can all put on the same background, you can bring your pet to the call, get Dan up on the call. You know can really just add -
Dave Hicking:
Dan the dog, not Dan the CEO. No offense to Dan
Jeanne Henry:
Dan the dog, not our boss. Just to bring a little bit of lighter humor to a call and not making it so serious where you're actually using a work meeting, an actual meeting with purpose, but using it as a time to get to know each other and have a little bit of laughter rather than it being serious and stressful.
Dave Hicking:
You all can't see this because this is an auditory experience, but Zuzana is experimenting with different headwear on our Zoom call right now to bring some needed... Oh, she has a mustache.
Jeanne Henry:
She is Les Zuzana right now.
Dave Hicking:
Les Zuzana. Yeah.
Zuzana Kunckova:
I like that. To make Zoom meetings less stressful, just put some emojis and what is it called? Video filters on.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah.
Zuzana Kunckova:
I think it makes things more interesting. I don't know what the clients would think about that though. You might want to check.
Dave Hicking:
It depends on the client. We've had some clients where mustache, no problem. Other clients, maybe not so much, and that's okay.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Yeah, and that goes well into my second question. I was like, "What about the cameras on and off?" Jeanne, you mentioned it helps when things get too much, just have the camera off, and I have to say yes, camera on, and like we all... I know you all and we've talked many times before, so I feel comfortable, but sometimes, especially with clients, client calls, you feel like you have to sit up straight and be presentable and only look at the screen, do not look away because then they might think you're browsing the internet and that, so what is your opinion about that? Do you think, especially on client calls, is it important to have the camera on? Is it okay to have it off? What would you think? What do you think?
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I think it's definitely okay to have it off. I think this is sensitive topic for some people because I think it's our human nature to want to connect with other people to gauge reactions, and a lot of that energy comes if I'm nodding in a meeting, listening to you, and so I think you're right, Zuzana. In those circumstances with the clients, you do feel that pressure to have it on, and I think a lot of that also comes to just maybe our prior lives when we weren't working remotely when we were in-person and that was the fallback. Everything was in-person, but I think it's just as normal and okay that sometimes we have to have our camera off, and having people have different styles of working and figuring out what fits best into each context is a great solution for that.
Jeanne Henry:
Keep in mind, when you have a call with a client, sometimes it might be a presentation and it could be better for the focus to be on that presentation rather than your face. There might be moments where you could turn on your camera for a moment and then turn it off. I think it comes down to, in that, in terms of being attentive and engaging, are there other ways that you can do that if your camera is off? Can you put that emoji on Zoom? Can you put that clap to show people that you're listening, even if your camera isn't on, because you aren't... When your camera's on, you can have those nonverbal clues like I'm mentioning, like shaking your head or other body language. I think the context is important, so are you just listening to that discussion with a lot of people on the call? You probably don't need to have your camera on,
Jeanne Henry:
Is it a more sensitive conversation that you're having with your boss? You probably do want to have your camera on. You can maybe have your reactions, just each other's reactions read, or if you're the facilitator and you're welcoming people for the first time that you've never met, maybe that's appropriate for you to have your camera on and say hi. Like you mentioned, Zuzana, you know us all well, so if... Your camera is on right now, but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be a big deal because we all know you. And then I think it just comes down to sometimes despite any context, it's just not a good day for the camera.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Definitely.
Jeanne Henry:
You can turn it off then. Y'know? You might just work better with it off and that's totally okay.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah, I appreciate that, all that nuance, Jeanne, because I will admit for me, I think when the idea of Zoom fatigue and camera on, camera off, when that whole conversation first came about, it was hard for me because I'm somebody who reads the room when I'm in a meeting and I get a lot of intake in from how people are responding to what I'm saying. I'm also somebody who, as you all can tell, I have to stop myself from... Not interrupting to interrupt, sometimes yes, but also to interrupt to agree, to be like, "Yes, yes." I'm sort of doing that, and so for me, nodding, I'm like, "Yes."
Dave Hicking:
I'm trying to show that I understand. But on the other hand, as you said, some days... First of all, that's not how everybody experiences meetings, and some days it's just you just need the camera off. Some days you're like me, recording in a room where I forgot to turn the light on and it's storming outside, and so now my camera is getting very dark except for my face, which is very, very bright because of the reflection of my screen, and normally I would turn the video off. One other thing I wanted to... One other thing. We got a couple other things here. Switching gears, this has been touched on a couple times, but I want to talk about who should be at a meeting.
Dave Hicking:
We've talked about what a meeting should be about, we've even talked about how long a meeting should be, but how do y'all decide who should be at a meeting? Because I think it's easy sometimes to either swing too big... We have all been on calls like this where there's 30 people on a call and you're like, "Okay, what's going on here?" But then it's also sometimes easy to go maybe a little too small and understanding you're trying to respect people's times, but it's like, "Man, if this person were on the call, actually we could have unlocked something or made a decision or been able to go forward." How do you decide?
Molly Fisher:
I think with the direction of understanding the type of meeting that we have and the purpose behind that meeting, understanding on one end, let's say it's a team meeting and we need to... You want to share information all at once, a source of truth shared to the entire company, but maybe not everyone is going to unmute on that call and it's going to be a major discussion with 30 people on it, but it's still important to likely have everyone together in order to share the information and everyone hear it at the same time from someone without the unassumed inflection of a typed out message. Having something communicated by video or by an audio message to an entire team at once could be very helpful, but thinking about what we focus on with projects and client meetings, knowing does everyone on this meeting gain from this meeting, or can they contribute to this meeting in some way?
Molly Fisher:
And wondering, does each person either have a question or they have a discussion point that they want to talk about, or there's a topic that requires all the ears within that meeting to hear the conversation involved in order to understand the end point. Now, that should also have us gather the idea of, well, how are we going to have summary notes and summaries of meetings if everyone had to be there? If that's the idea, how are we passing along information from that meeting? Could we not have just passed along the information?
Molly Fisher:
Well, if it's people that are key decision holders or designers, or developers that are implementing those decisions, sometimes it's helpful to have that context before they charge ahead with instructions of action items. I think it's important to also question if you find yourself on back-to-back-to-back meetings, because you must contribute to all conversations. Is that how you want to be in your role? Is that what you should be doing? Can you be delegating some of those tasks? Is that how you enjoy spending your time, in those back-to-back meetings? If so, please take some of Jeanne's tips on Zoom fatigue and getting over the feeling of being worn down by meetings, because whether you're adding a value left and right, you may not need to be on all of those meetings.
Molly Fisher:
As a PM we're deciding who are the people making decisions that need to contribute to this conversation? Who are the developers or designers that need to weigh in or understand with the client's own words what needs to be solved? How as a PM can we help facilitate and take on maybe a little bit of the burden of guiding the conversation to make sure we hit all the points? And overall knowing, gosh, we don't need every single person on every single call every time. We need to be understanding to mix it up because that's how we're going to get the most value, because every meeting likely probably has a different purpose, so we should adjust the attendees to that purpose.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Well, in case it is a big meeting, do you think it's okay to leave if you find that it's not for you or you don't need to be there, you don't have to sit through a meeting that's not... Like you've got nothing to add to? Or would you think it'd be considered rude? Is it something against the meeting etiquette? Once you're in a meeting, you just have to sit through it regardless. What do you think?
Molly Fisher:
I know you want me to answer with a yes or no, I feel like, but it's going to be a major it depends.
Zuzana Kunckova:
It depends.
Molly Fisher:
And I think it also comes down to the communication around that and especially the trust between the participants in the call. If it is a call with a client and you're on a four hour call and you just drop off... Dave just made a face and I respect that reaction.
Dave Hicking:
You said four hour call.
Molly Fisher:
Yeah. I'm imagining this big, long meeting, but thinking about protecting your mental health on the call saying I need to go ahead and drop. I know my workload best. I need to go work on something else. Or not even needing to give a full excuse, but being able to communicate enough of, "Hey, I had to drop off, I'll chat with you later." And if that trust has been established and the communication is happening, it should lead to little repercussion, no repercussion, no hard feelings about that reaction, and hopefully also a discussion around why we're having such long meetings and why people feel like they need to Irish goodbye a meeting, just drop off and not say a darn word. Why are we having those meetings if that is how participants need to react to leaving? Is that really the best use of everyone's time? It wasn't of that person's, so we have to question how we're facilitating, how we're doing it, the times of day we're doing it. All of those things.
Dave Hicking:
Okay. I want to go lightning round real quick here because I'm going to ask the question that we could go in all kinds of directions, so this is for both Molly and Jeanne. Daily standups, they good, bad, neither, it depends? I'm waiting for an it depends. I'm going to allow that as an option. Who wants to go first?
Zuzana Kunckova:
We've already had one "it depends". I think we should limit "it depends" too. Only one each, so Molly can't have it depends anymore.
Molly Fisher:
One PM each. Okay, so Jeanne can still say "it depends" if she wants to.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah, Jeanne.
Jeanne Henry:
Yeah, I think for a project that's really huge with a lot of team members and things are moving quickly that a daily standup can be productive and to help address questions and blockers, and also just provide a regular reliable structure and cadence and transparency. As with anything, you have to consider is it useful to that specific team? Is it natural to the way we communicate? I think at Tighten specifically, when we're on a team with, often on a team with two developers and the client team, we're able to communicate very well without a daily standup, and that we find that communication in Slack can help fill in any gaps, and a weekly call with a client is enough in concert with also Slack.
Jeanne Henry:
And not to mention that things that are said on a daily standup can often be said in Slack, so you can say in Slack, "I'm blocked on X, Y, Z. I have this X, Y, Z question." I think in situations where daily standups would be a nuisance, where people are in different time zones, where you know can communicate in other ways that they don't work best, but every circumstance is different, so I can certainly see some circumstances where, yeah, it depends, it could work.
Molly Fisher:
I also definitely see the angle where daily standups are most often advocated for by the folks who are listening to every single person receive their update such as a PM or a director or CTO that's wanting to hear every single person's update. But the folks who are attending giving those individual updates may not need to listen to another person's update, especially in the context of several different projects trying to be managed within a single standup, so if there's not a discussion or an engagement between two different folks giving their updates, they're popping in to give and deliver a very, almost a bulleted list, one could say, update to a person who's hearing that all, but they're not engaging with the person beside them. Or if another person says, "I do have a block or I do have a problem," someone else may be mentally far, far away and they haven't heard that even be mentioned.
Molly Fisher:
While it could have been facilitated to have that be a problem solving moment, it isn't because they could have already checked out, they've already given their update, they get to move along, they've done their part in the meeting because these standups end up being often a PM talking to the person giving the update, and then next person in line, next person in line. If we thought about can the PM ask... Can a Slack message happen? And if I have follow up questions, I will ask those, great, and if we question, well, Slack messages aren't good enough, are we having conversations about what good communication is? Whether it's in the standup and I said, "I worked on this issue, this issue, this issue, no blockers," well, that wasn't a very healthy update either, so communication wise in a meeting or via Slack, what is our standard of good communication for what we're thinking we're going to get out by scheduling a daily standup?
Dave Hicking:
Yeah, I keep-
Zuzana Kunckova:
Something that...
Dave Hicking:
Oh, go ahead Zuzana.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Go ahead. I was going to say, I think these daily standups are perfect example when once you give your update, you can just leave. Why would we have to hang around listening to everyone else when it most likely nothing to do with our task or our part in the project? I don't know if, again, if it's the right etiquette. I don't know.
Dave Hicking:
I think Zuzana wants to leave some meetings.
Molly Fisher:
And it feels that way until... Well, and it feels that way as long as you're the person that got to go -
Zuzana Kunckova:
Can I go now?
Molly Fisher:
If you're the one that got to go first, you're like, "Absolutely I want to leave." If you're the last one there and it's you and the PM and you're like, "Well, shoot. I guess this could have been a one-on-one meeting." It starts feeling a little bit more weird where you're like, "Why did we all gather for us to all drop off?"
Jeanne Henry:
I think when the parts are connected to each other and you need that transparency to see what the other person's doing and how it connects to your work, and if a Slack's not the best way to facilitate that, if a standup happens to be, that's where they tend to be more useful rather than just like I did task R2. Nobody cares.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah-
Molly Fisher:
Yeah, you're bridging the gap of between, we could have standups, they don't have to be daily, they could be twice a week and at standard times where the other days we do Slack updates, or we do it once a week because sometimes a conversation's really important if we're all on the same project.
Zuzana Kunckova:
I think I quite like the Tightens way of doing end of day updates. You get daily end of day updates, so you know what people are working on, and then you don't need daily standups because this is what it is. That's what it is.
Dave Hicking:
Yeah. I can't believe I'm... I can't believe I'm going to defend standups. No, which is not to say that people who are doing standups should feel one way or the other. I think it's just part and parcel of what we've been talking about this entire episode, which is I think meetings get a bad rap because sometimes people have bad meetings, but it's like, "Well, meetings can have a purpose, just like standups can have a purpose." And I think to of refer to what our CTO Matt says, is uppercase A agile versus lowercase A agile. I feel like what comes a lot of times for teams who are adopting some sort of agile methodology is, "Oh, we got to have a standup," without actually trying to understand, I'm going to say my favorite phrase, what problem are we trying to solve with the standup? What is the point of this?
Dave Hicking:
Is it just to give a summary? Well, you can do that in Slack. Is it to get people together who are working on things that might eventually intersect? Okay, let's get them... That actually might be worthwhile to talk out. Is it like, "Oh, I'm actually stuck and the structure of my team is pretty flat, so I don't have a lead to go to? Instead I need to ask other people for their opinion and this is the one way I do it." Okay. Well, a standup could be super helpful, but I think it's like it should just be another tool that you use when you need it. Here I am with the it depends defense of doing standups.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Well, you allowed once. We'll let it slide.
Dave Hicking:
We're going to let it slide. Okay. I think we are actually at time. We have been recording for a little while longer than I expected. I want to thank Molly and Jeanne for joining us, but before we go, one last thing, which is for either of you, this is for both of you, either of you, however you want to do this. Is there something about meetings that we haven't talked about that you think, "Yeah, I want people to hear this from us before they stop listening to this episode?" Is there something we didn't ask or didn't touch on that you want to get out? Some hot take or some really informed opinion, something that's like, really, like I want to talk about this?
Zuzana Kunckova:
Oh, I wish you could see their faces.
Dave Hicking:
They're both thinking hard and also thinking, "Dave, why did you spring this on me right now?"
Zuzana Kunckova:
That wasn't on the agenda, was it?
Dave Hicking:
Want on the agenda.
Molly Fisher:
And yet we know it at the end of every single Twenty Percent Time podcast, and I should have known, but thinking about the illusion that more meetings equals more contribution to a team, or an illusion of productivity, that is an angle that we should fight against, especially in corporate world of, let me just add a meeting in order to solve this issue, address this issue. Advocate for yourself and know that you can have, at least hopefully within the company and team that you're at, that you are... You're hoping that everyone's communication and time is used wisely, and you can have standards for what the purpose of a meeting is. It's okay to ask what are we going to be talking about? Aim for finding intentionality and purpose behind every meeting and get the most out of it, and also explore those tools to sometimes avoid meetings such as Loom or Scribe, or a very well thought out bulleted list Slack message, all of that.
Jeanne Henry:
And as Dave just introduced us to, don't forget to do a time check.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Time check. Yeah.
Dave Hicking:
All right everybody. Molly, Jeanne, thank you so much for joining Zuzana and I, really appreciate it. This has I hope been super interesting for folks because meetings are the kind of thing that, whether we like it or not, we all have to deal with at one point or another, and I hope people walk away from this thinking, "Okay, so maybe meetings, maybe they don't have to suck." I don't know. It's not much to ask. Zuzana, is there anything else you wanted to ask? I think Molly wanted to say something too.
Zuzana Kunckova:
No, I think... It's not that I'm not a fan of meetings. Meetings are fine.
Dave Hicking:
You're ready to get off this call right now?
Zuzana Kunckova:
No, no. But now I feel like I'm empowered that I can speak up. If I feel like I shouldn't be there, maybe I'm just going to bring it up and ask, "Do I have to be there?" Or maybe I'm not going to have to come around all the time. I'm going to put some funny silly hat on, something. Maybe just meetings don't have to be all serious. Let's make it more fun, I suppose.
Molly Fisher:
And we hit on all those points during this call. We kept it under an hour, we followed an agenda.
Zuzana Kunckova:
There you go.
Molly Fisher:
We kept it light and I think we all knew what we wanted to get out of this and hopefully we all contributed in that way.
Dave Hicking:
All right. Thanks everybody. Really appreciate you two being on.
Zuzana Kunckova:
Thank you.
Jeanne Henry:
Thank you.