The most useful things I’ve learned about meetings

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Different types of meetings solve different types of problems.

We should have different types of meetings because we are solving different types of problems:

• Strategy: What should we do?
• Alignment: Do we all understand what we should do and why?
• Execution: Are we effective? Are we delivering? Are we operating well?

References: Death by Meeting, The Art of Action

Meetings are only useful if the problem benefits from dialogue.

This seems somewhat obvious until you notice people are holding meetings out of reflex rather than thinking through what is needed to progress a situation (e.g., write something, prototype something, etc.).

The larger the meeting, the longer it takes to get to depth on any issue.

Too many people means inability to quickly get to depth.

Reference: Cindy Alvarez’ 6-Person Discussion

The less perspectives in a meeting, the less likely problems are detected.

Not enough perspective means inability to detect problems.