[funkymike]

> I've been in meetings that start with 15 minutes of silent reading, then 45 minutes of discussion. No PowerPoint presenting.

I wish this could happen where I am. No one wants to bother reading anything ahead of the meeting to be prepared for a discussion. Then the same people don't have the patience to let the group review the material during the meeting before starting the discussion.

[mabbo]

This is exactly the point of the silent reading time. Stop lying to yourself and others by saying you'll read ahead. You won't. No one will. Or worse, everyone but one person will and he'll have "skimmed it" and then ask questions that are on page 2, wasting everyone's time.

If you want to bring this to wherever you work, I encourage it. All you need to do is lead the meeting yourself with a strong, assertive voice. Tell them this is what we're doing. When someone inevitably complains just ask them to please wait to ask questions until everyone is done.

[duxup]

I WANT TO read ahead, but nobody tells me even what meetings are about despite having company wide meetings on effective meeting and the first point was about setting agendas and seating meeting goals and topics.

[wool_gather]

I've found just declining these no-info meetings to be an effective way to combat the time loss. It's most constructive to send an email alongside saying something like "please share an agenda or materials for this", but that can vary based on context too. And you can even decline after that happens: "Thanks for the details. I'm sorry, but I cannot take the time away from X right now to attend this. Next week may be possible."

If somebody really needs my time, they can tell me why -- or go through my manager which they should be doing anyways.

[deathanatos]

You say that, and it sounds like it ought to work, and yet…

I had to do that to a co-worker, and all I got back was "Product Foo". Okay, but what about Product Foo? Blood from a stone, every damn time, and it wears me down.

[wool_gather]

Well, that kind of reply is just rude, and personally I'd probably ignore it and leave the meeting declined. If it comes up later, "Your reply about the meeting? No, I don't think...oh, I did see it, right. I assumed there was more info coming; I'm totally focussed on $X right now, you know."

[AlexCoventry]

"I'm sorry, my responsibilities don't leave me any time to discuss Foo in general terms at the moment. If you really you need me to, please raise it with $manager, and we will reprioritize my duties."

[duxup]

If that's an option, yeah I think that is a really good route.

It wasn't in my situation, mostly because everyone sucked at meetings at an astounding level. But I'm not there anymore thankfully!

[dv_dt]

I think this flourishes only because it comes from the top of Amazon, with Bezo's being the top proponent of this writing-first communication process.

[Topgamer7]

Bake it into the meeting.

[JustSomeNobody]

People won't read ahead, so you all have to get up to speed on the doc, during the meeting, then some jerk manager who is always late comes in and makes us all repeat the same discussion. The meeting ends up taking all the time just to cover what is in the doc but no decision gets made because we ran out of time.

[dkasper]

Sounds like you need to change teams.