[ChrisMarshallNY]

I just have a policy of as few meetings (remote or FTF), as possible. No repeating, scheduled ones. All meetings should be ad hoc (so no daily standups or weekly roundups).

As I worked for a Japanese company, these ideas found stony soil, but now that I'm on my own, I try to keep this policy.

[SoftTalker]

I agree completely. If a meeting is being held so that one person can present information to the group, that can be an email.

If a meeting is held so each person can update a leader with his/her status, those updates can also be emails. If the whole group needs to see those updates, it can be a wiki or a shared document.

A meeting should only be called when that group of people needs to discuss a topic together and reach a consensus or make a decision. If it's just for communicating information, there are better, asynchronous alternatives.

[ebiester]

I think the key problem is that you optimize for bandwidth over latency, and it ignores that a manager is often looking for symmetric, real-time information.

For example, if I am presenting information for a group, and this is going to cause stress or discord, I need to know quickly how the group reacts so that I can either adjust the plan, clarify the communication, or know I have work to do to manage the relationship. Latency matters here because these delays can cause people's lives to be worse because I wasn't able to monitor body language.

Status meetings seem like something that can be replaced by an email, but it turns a manager's job from coordination to task assignment. Example: "Who can help?" versus "Jane, go help John, and Ted, go review this code, and Jane, after that redirect to this customer support request." It may be that Ted already knows the answer, and that John knows how to quickly handle the customer support request, but that's not going to be resolved via email. And unless you have everyone wired to slack, it's going to waste everyone's time. (Wiring everyone to slack is the worst of both worlds.)

The goal should be that the team is organizing around the problem, but that means that the team is talking in low-latency methods. Email does not get there. Latency matters. (So does bandwidth, but time spent on the wrong thing doesn't help anyone.)

[ChrisMarshallNY]

That’s an excellent point.

Well explained.