Does hearing the word “meeting” still rings a bell?. The common chores amongst all are “oh, no! look at my calendar, it's full of meetings and I don’t know when I will get time to do my actual work”.
I am not sure who Invented meetings. It is believed that Meetistotle (brother of great Aristotle) invented “the meeting”. During my last 15 years, I somehow never felt connected during meetings until I decided to become a Scrum Master 5 years back and I was forced to convert these meetings into ceremonies making them interesting. But the question arises why everybody hates meeting so much.
My first acquaintance with hatred towards the meeting started in the year 2013. One of my managers would always take those monologue meetings conveying the vision. The monologue type meeting is where one person does talk and mostly is the loudest person in the meeting. Their talks give them the pseudo belief that they had changed the world, unrealizing the world outside the meeting room is still the same. In conclusion, either you are shattered, broken, visionless, or just waiting for that coffee or bio break after those pointless meetings, flushing those thoughts in the closet. I learned my first lesson: Every meeting should have an agenda and more importantly a conclusion or at least some actions.
How many of us walk into a meeting without even knowing why you are there in the first place?. The problem is that the decisions are always made by the single person in the room, most of the time the single person is the loudest and in some cases one who is driving the meeting. But the real danger is these decisions are more likely to be reversed, ultimately wasting everybody’s time. WORKING WITH NO REAL PURPOSE!
Most of the organization, the bosses insist that they are educated on the whole thing (problem) so that they can take decisions on behalf of their people. But in such cases, the real struggle is to explain to them the real ground-level issues. The problem doubles when they (mgmt) only hear or understand what they want to. I recollect seating behind the boss, and he/she is typing the response listening to you. You will always be in the hands of someone to make a decision who knows the least about the situation. PUSH THE DECISION DOWN, TRUST YOUR PEOPLE!
I think meetings if utilized can be a game-changer for everyone. You can motivate, give vision, and solve problems via meetings.
Specifically, in the case of Scrum, these become too criticals. The solution to this problem is simple but hard. Apart from tracking the regular metrics such as burndown, cycle time, etc, we can think of tracking below things:
1) No. of decisions taken by every scrum member in the sprint. (importantly understanding the Why part, taking a decision is a critical part of empowerment and risk ability)
2) Total no of meetings in the sprint. (including the scrum ceremonies).
3) How many decisions made by employees during these meetings? (tracking the decisions taken/meeting and decisions reversed/meeting).
4) How many meetings went without any decision or action plan? (This is what is slowing you down or your decision-making process).
Lastly, I forgot to tell you Meetistotle was eventually stoned to death.😊
