[deanCommie]

Does anyone know how to avoid this anti-pattern in group discussions?

I don't think starting from the more important issues is always the answer. Assuming that: * the time for discussion is finite * discussions and meetings expand to fill the time they have (meetings expand to fill the time they have)

It follows to me that in many situations it IS good to start with the easy stuff, like the bike shed, to get it out of the way, and then spend the longer period of time all the way to the end on the more significant subject.

But what can one do to prevent investing too much time on the bikeshed? Timeboxing? And what happens if your box is over but no decision is made?

[testudovictoria]

You need to enumerate the goals of the meeting on a whiteboard. Literally write them out so people can see. I have found this to be the most effective method by far. When people have a meeting agenda in their email, it won't come to mind during the meeting. When they see the topics ahead of them, they know exactly what needs to be addressed.

Someone has to play the assertive, no nonsense authority. Meetings are ripe for sidebar conversations. It only gets worse with more people, people from different offices/sections/projects, closeness of participants, etc. Whoever is running the meeting needs to ensure that the agenda is the foremost priority. Keep the agenda conversation going while squelching pointless conversation.

Keep a list of tabled topics. Not all sidebar conversation is bad. There are tangentially related topics that need to be addressed as well, but they may not take precedent over what is on the agenda. Those topics can also be written on the board to circle back to if time permits. This has the added bonus of growing the agenda while keeping the time allotted constant.

Understand why people argue and what is needed to make both parties happy. For the longest time, I didn't realize that I was arguing poorly. I knew what my point was and what I wanted to get across. I would listen to their reasons for arguing their side, but I never got to their core beliefs. Sometimes you have to outright ask what will it take to make them change their mind.

An underhanded trick that can be used (but not every time) is to give them a sense of urgency: Thanks for attending this meeting. I know we have a lot to cover, but I have to leave in 45 minutes. If we focus, I know we can hit all of these topics. If certain topics are limping along, give a time check: We need to make a decision. I only have 25 minutes with 3 more topics to go.

[mabbo]

> Someone has to play the assertive, no nonsense authority.

This is one of the most critical roles a good manager can play. I've seen a team cut its meeting hours per week in half because the new manager did this well.

[Timberwolf]

With our teams, the most useful thing we found was simply self-awareness that we were bikeshedding. So you need people to be prepared to stand up and say, "hang on, is this really important or are we just bikeshedding here?"

When we started doing this, we found that the bikeshed discussion would often be a consequence of too many people who didn't really have a stake in the outcome being involved in the decision. It didn't really matter to them which option was chosen, but they felt they had to take a position and/or provide lots of input. So our next step once we'd identified something as a bikeshed would be to say, "okay, who actually needs to make this decision" and defer the decision until those people could form a splinter group and come up with an answer.

The combination of a smaller group and a bit of time to digest the opinions coming out of the initial bikeshed discussion usually meant that this was more productive. Often it came up with a better end solution than any of the ones proposed during the bikeshed.

[taco_emoji]

Careful, though... then you might start a meta-argument about whether or not the topic is really important or not. "If we just paint the bikeshed the right color, customers will flock to us!"

[awesomerobot]

Clearly defined goals (literally write them down on a whiteboard if you can) and a little time management? It's tough.

If you've got an hour-long meeting and 30 minutes in you're talking about the color of a button, reestablish the goal of the meeting — "hey, we're halfway through this meeting and we're still stuck on the button color — maybe we should make a decision now or move on"

I've found that a lot of bikeshedding ends up being uninformed opinions/bias. If there's no evidence one way or the other it always seems more efficient to just pick one path and do it. Flip a coin, do an A/B test.

[yummyfajitas]

I've seen A/B testing drastically reduce bikeshedding.

I worked with a PM who wanted to cut bikeshedding a while back. When some executive vociferously argued that we should do things B way, the PM just asked him to document why it's important in an email and then told him we'd do it.

A week later an email went out with the executive's strongly worded argument why B is important at the top. At the bottom is "we A/B tested, there is no statistically significant difference between A and B. Guess $executive was wrong."

After a few go-rounds of this, bikeshedding was significantly reduced.

Bikeshedding is easy and fun! But having an email go out to everyone a week later proving statistically that you were wrong is less fun.

[cmdrfred]

The only way I discovered is to not work with 'bikeshedding' types. Some people (typically people who contribute little else), have a propensity to do this when placed in leadership positions. They have to put their little mark on everything at the cost of everyone else's time. This I feel is the secret behind a lot of startups kicking incumbents ass in recent years, old school monolithic corporations are full of bikeshedding bullshitters.

[pawadu]

You can't always choose who you can work with. And quite often bikeshedding comes from your boss.

I found it more efficient to first make people familiar with the phenomena and when it happens in a meeting just tell them so. Surprising how well it works on most people.

[cmdrfred]

I have not had success with that method. You are probably a better communicator than I.

[wyldfire]

> But what can one do to prevent investing too much time on the bikeshed? Timeboxing? And what happens if your box is over but no decision is made?

My best suggestion is to either ask "is [answering that question] the primary goal for this meeting?" or remind people how much time is left in the scheduled meeting vs how much material needs review.

[crdoconnor]

I've found that just pointing it out is usually enough to stop it.

Only when you have a disagreement about something's relative importance does that not work.