“Decline.”
Working in IT, I have learned that a lot of meetings are by people who gain “respect and notoriety” by having large meetings. It doesn’t matter who shows up, it’s the number, that makes them seem popular. “Get the engineers in here, this is serious business!” You begin to learn which PMs do this, and can respond (or not) accordingly. If they ping you “where are you?” you can say, “I am in an [client] audit call. I cannot leave this call while the audit is taking place.” Or whatever your industry equivalent is. YMMV, some toxic environments I have been in, this was not possible.
I remember one PM was frozen in indecision. I had to tell him, “I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one.”
“Well, both–”
“No. I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one or the other.”
“I need you in this meeting!”
“When we explain to the customer that the fix was delayed by an hour, I can use YOUR name, as having a meeting about it instead of fixing it, correct?”
“The meeting is to be about fixing it!”
“No. I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one or the other.”
“… we can have the meeting in your office, then.”
Eventually, my boss shooed him away.
Actually the right side graph needs a correction from my point of view. The decline in productivity doesn’t happen sharply when the meeting starts. For me the decline starts between 15 to 30 minutes before the meeting slowly, as I can hardly concentrate concerned that I might miss the start. If I’m ever in hyper concentration mode, most likely I’ll miss the start of the meeting.
yep. My understanding though is that this was for a surprise meeting, which you wouldn’t know about until it starts.
Ah indeed, you are right, somehow I missed the unexpected part. I guess because this applies to just about any meeting to me, not only the unexpected ones so I just applied it generally x)
I have been having to attend these asinine meetings for an hour a day for the last month when they were twice a week for far less time. But since we have an emergency situation the whole plan is discussed with everyone so many times. I know it’s a pain, but I feel it takes me away from what I should be working on. I hate it.
Oh yeah I love that corporate mindset - there’s a major issue so let’s take even more time away from fixing the problem.
The issue is management only has one tool (meetings), and if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Surely another meeting will fix it.
