| > They know that no one will read it before-hand, so they make time in the schedule. That's an attitude of acceptance (is that the right word?) that I find inspiring. I've felt that meetings would be more productive if the person presenting had to prepare some written material, and we all had to read it ahead of time. That way we have some shared base level of knowledge and the discussion can be done at a higher level. Inevitably, some people don't read the doc. Some of them are honest and the presenter is nice and catches them up quickly. (If all of this information can be transferred in 1 minute, then why did I get a 5 page doc?). Or worse, people pretend they read it and didn't. You could try to build some culture around "making it a requirement" (shaming them if they don't?) but, more often than not, the person who didn't read the materials is the biggest boss in the room, and enforcing requirements up a corporate org chart is a fool's errand. So, someone at Amazon was like "fuck it", realizing that half the point of a meeting is just forcing people to work on something by putting them in a room together. And rather than complaining that that's kinda dumb (which it is) they just decided to increase the quality of work that happens in those meetings by setting aside 10 minute for reading. |