The title makes it seem like a bad thing, but it makes total sense to me to want to cut unnecessary meetings down and use "different tactics" of getting there. I work in a company right now where we have 1 meeting at the start of the week and that's it (unless something comes up - it rarely does) It's a game-changer for my output and productivity.
Was this single meeting decision stumbled upon or iterated into or are you following a formalized system like EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) or something similar?
It's just like how the the new manager at this company likes to work. He said in a lot of his management philosophies he vowed to himself when he was entry level if he becomes a manager he'll do things differently.
This is interesting. For a while I had a client who drug their consultants and leadership into endless meetings, so we put a "cost of this meeting" calculation in the invite, notes, and handouts. It changed almost nothing. The problem was that the spending number was viewed as a cost of doing business. The difference between "expensing" a $500 meal and cutting a $500 meeting is that I get to eat the meal. I think for this to work you've got to directly pass on the saving. In many workplaces nobody cares if a canceled meeting makes an executive's bonus bigger...
Final thought - we need to be careful not to cut out all human interactions. COVID showed how isolating life can be without friends you see at work everyday. We shouldn't be using made-up-reason-meetings as an venue for mentorship, connection, and socialization, but sometimes that's exactly what happens. People hate meetings, but people get lonely...
Meetings shouldn't be social for the sake of being social. I agree that there's a social aspect to work, but don't use meetings as an excuse for social engagement.
Instead, a company should embrace that social-ness of doing in-person work and just let people socialize without a penalty. I'd argue that a company that promotes social activities and connectedness between workers is one that performs better anyway.
And for those who don't want to socialize and work better in isolation, let them. Meetings, by definition, probably feel like a "waste of time" for at least one or more attendees. People should feel like they are empowered to choose which meetings are most beneficial to their work.
My coworkers are not my friends. I don't make friends at work, I maintain professional relationships. I connect with them on LinkedIn, I don't friend them on Facebook. We discuss work-related topics and we solve problems.
I don't chit-chat with my coworkers about music videos or church or the weather. I don't get intimate with my coworkers or try to ask them out for drinks, or tell them how pretty their eyes look. I don't invite them over to hang out at the pool.
It is perhaps unfortunate, but American corporate culture, as a direct result of its diversity and inclusion, has become a culture of non-intimacy and non-engagement. If I attempted to make "friends" at work, I'd risk being nailed for insubordination, loafing, or sexual harassment. It's not worth it, so we find our friends and dates outside the company.
Not sure how you're coming to your conclusion about DEI being responsible for "non-intimacy and non-engagement."
If you can't make friends at work without being "nailed for insubordination, loafing or sexual harassment," you might want to take a good hard look in the mirror at how you behave with your friends.
This is pretty terrible, if I cared that much about my employers bank account, why don't we do
* WARNING: 26 weeks parental leave will cost us $xxx,xxx
* WARNING: Buying team lunch this week will cost $x,xxx
* WARNING: Offering laid off workers 20 weeks severance will cost $xx,xxx,xxx
* WARNING: Offering your direct reports raises will cost the company money!
And while we're at it. Should we do performance reviews where a team sees how much income they personally generated vs how much the team costs the company? That would be super fun, that will probably stop most people from asking for a raise
Just ask people to limit meetings to the minimum, no need to flash numbers into a guilt trip for a bank account I do not own. If you asked me my employer should give me $100 for lunch every day, 4 day workweeks at 8 hours a day, 52 weeks parental leave, and other costly things I really don't mind them paying for. The cost of a meeting is the last thing I care about
If I see 2 employees talking about yesterdays football game in the kitchenette, should I report them wasting $1,500 of the companies time to HR?
Oh, and finally, im sure these calculations are based on 40 hour work weeks. Is this a good reason for an employee to tell their boss at Shopify they will not be online or answering any slack/email after 5pm every day?
Thing is, a lot of staff just don't have a sense of how much things actually cost, this is a pretty easy way to get them in the habit of thinking that way. Doesn't have to be forever, just long enough to change the culture.
As you said "The cost of a meeting is the last thing I care about"
That's a pretty awful attitude to take in a business. I also think it's a pretty privileged position to take. If you NEED your job, and getting a new job would be difficult for you, you sure as heck should care about the financial health and stability of the business. If you don't care about the business you work at, alright, that's on you... never the less many co-workers likely do care about the health of the business.
10+ years ago I worked for a major US investment and financial services bank. We had a tool that did exactly this, it was connected to the telephone system and would give you a running cost of the call. On outage calls, we'd often have 30+ people on the call and the numbers were insane.
It wasn't used to shame people, just useful for awareness... and I don't believe it was official endorsed by the firm.
I have always been bewildered by the anti-meeting sentiment in the tech community. There seems to be an assumption that meetings are bad. But obviously, meetings facilitate communication. You can waste a lot more time by not having a meeting and letting misunderstandings abound.
Shopify employees are going to get paid for their time whether they're in a meeting or not, so this calculator should consider the cost savings that result from having a meeting instead of not having a meeting.
"Meetings are a waste" is just such a juvenile perspective. If meetings truly are a waste in your organization, then the problem is your employees.
I.e., it is probably you who is the waste, not the meeting you're in.
I’ve been to too many meetings where we decide something and then revisit it next year because we literally can’t remember how the meeting went. Sometimes many of the attendees have moved on now. Meetings need an agenda and a recording (video, minutes, whatever) to have value comparable to docs or email threads. Everyone we hire tomorrow will have missed every meeting, but docs are waiting for them.
Meetings are also noisy, so it’s hard to contribute if you need quiet to think.
I used to feel this way as well. But meetings can spiral out of control. In my previous company, my stand ups were taking 30 min minimum and sometimes up to an hour. At one point, I was looking at 3 hours of meetings a day. As an IC, I felt pretty powerless because it was my EM that was making these decisions.
If cc’ing me, please no. Threads with loads of people includes are one of the more gross big-org features. At least I can not turn up to someone’s stupid meeting.
These are perceived to be worse than meetings, again mainly by non-technical teams who have never seen email (tied to a web-based mailing list, specifically) used to drive decisions.
A big problem with the pivot to WFH is that meeting sizes were no longer bound by the physical size of a room.
The result was that meetings could explode in size to dozens of people as anyone and everyone vaguely related to an issue was pulled in.
Now I've heard some say that that's not a big problem because people can "work" on other things while being present in the meeting waiting until the small moment when they might be needed/relevant/useful, but I cannot believe it is efficient and good to have a bunch of people vaguely distracted and not engaged in either their work or the meeting.
IMO whether wfh or present in the room, people need to be really disciplined about meeting size and keeping at the smallest possible size of totally engaged persons.
My company semi regularly runs a company wide meeting with over 100 people in it to share announcements that aren’t relevant to any employees in my country. The whole thing could be a newsletter and be just as effective without taking an hour from every employee.
While this is an interesting take, it also plays into the meetings are bad mindset without thinking things through. The problem here is in the opportunity cost. The discussion that doesn't happen in the meeting now happens asynchronously, which means more back and forth, and the time spent it now spread over more people. I don't think the cost gets saved.
I think meetings are great if they are optional for everyone attending and it has a clear deliverable at the end of it. That way people who don't think have anything to add can skip it and you always come out of it with action items and clear owners.
Readit News
I’m curious as to how that came about.
And, kudos to him, he does.
Final thought - we need to be careful not to cut out all human interactions. COVID showed how isolating life can be without friends you see at work everyday. We shouldn't be using made-up-reason-meetings as an venue for mentorship, connection, and socialization, but sometimes that's exactly what happens. People hate meetings, but people get lonely...
Meetings shouldn't be social for the sake of being social. I agree that there's a social aspect to work, but don't use meetings as an excuse for social engagement.
Instead, a company should embrace that social-ness of doing in-person work and just let people socialize without a penalty. I'd argue that a company that promotes social activities and connectedness between workers is one that performs better anyway.
And for those who don't want to socialize and work better in isolation, let them. Meetings, by definition, probably feel like a "waste of time" for at least one or more attendees. People should feel like they are empowered to choose which meetings are most beneficial to their work.
I don't chit-chat with my coworkers about music videos or church or the weather. I don't get intimate with my coworkers or try to ask them out for drinks, or tell them how pretty their eyes look. I don't invite them over to hang out at the pool.
It is perhaps unfortunate, but American corporate culture, as a direct result of its diversity and inclusion, has become a culture of non-intimacy and non-engagement. If I attempted to make "friends" at work, I'd risk being nailed for insubordination, loafing, or sexual harassment. It's not worth it, so we find our friends and dates outside the company.
If you can't make friends at work without being "nailed for insubordination, loafing or sexual harassment," you might want to take a good hard look in the mirror at how you behave with your friends.
* WARNING: 26 weeks parental leave will cost us $xxx,xxx
* WARNING: Buying team lunch this week will cost $x,xxx
* WARNING: Offering laid off workers 20 weeks severance will cost $xx,xxx,xxx
* WARNING: Offering your direct reports raises will cost the company money!
And while we're at it. Should we do performance reviews where a team sees how much income they personally generated vs how much the team costs the company? That would be super fun, that will probably stop most people from asking for a raise
Just ask people to limit meetings to the minimum, no need to flash numbers into a guilt trip for a bank account I do not own. If you asked me my employer should give me $100 for lunch every day, 4 day workweeks at 8 hours a day, 52 weeks parental leave, and other costly things I really don't mind them paying for. The cost of a meeting is the last thing I care about
If I see 2 employees talking about yesterdays football game in the kitchenette, should I report them wasting $1,500 of the companies time to HR?
Oh, and finally, im sure these calculations are based on 40 hour work weeks. Is this a good reason for an employee to tell their boss at Shopify they will not be online or answering any slack/email after 5pm every day?
As you said "The cost of a meeting is the last thing I care about"
That's a pretty awful attitude to take in a business. I also think it's a pretty privileged position to take. If you NEED your job, and getting a new job would be difficult for you, you sure as heck should care about the financial health and stability of the business. If you don't care about the business you work at, alright, that's on you... never the less many co-workers likely do care about the health of the business.
This sushi we're having for lunch must also cost a fortune
Jokes aside, this screams of an org that isn't able to judge its employees by what they deliver, so they have to go chase processes
Either Shopify employees are delivering what they're expected to or they're not. It feels like executives aren't able to figure out if they are
It wasn't used to shame people, just useful for awareness... and I don't believe it was official endorsed by the firm.
Shopify employees are going to get paid for their time whether they're in a meeting or not, so this calculator should consider the cost savings that result from having a meeting instead of not having a meeting.
"Meetings are a waste" is just such a juvenile perspective. If meetings truly are a waste in your organization, then the problem is your employees.
I.e., it is probably you who is the waste, not the meeting you're in.
The unit of work for a manager is a meeting because they need to coordinate.
The IC is more of an execution role which requires sustained concentration.
If managers don’t understand this difference and call for meetings willynilly, they are actually costing the company productivity.
Regular syncs are important so that people are working on the right thing but people also need time to work.
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Deleted Comment
Meetings are also noisy, so it’s hard to contribute if you need quiet to think.
There is, in many orgs, no analog for the things that technical staff regularly use that make a meeting unnecessary.
PR? GitHub discussion? ADRs? RFCs? Never heard of them.
Dead Comment
The result was that meetings could explode in size to dozens of people as anyone and everyone vaguely related to an issue was pulled in.
Now I've heard some say that that's not a big problem because people can "work" on other things while being present in the meeting waiting until the small moment when they might be needed/relevant/useful, but I cannot believe it is efficient and good to have a bunch of people vaguely distracted and not engaged in either their work or the meeting.
IMO whether wfh or present in the room, people need to be really disciplined about meeting size and keeping at the smallest possible size of totally engaged persons.