Meetings are Wonderful

I have spent a lot of time at work running from meeting to meeting. I have also joined in the communal venting about them, complaining how little time I have left to do other work. But I have come to realize that simply putting a ton of meetings on the calendar can be one effective component of project success.

One difficult project on which I worked had a team comprised of people who really didn't want to have regular meetings. Being overworked and overwhelmed, the idea of committing more time to a standing meeting was anathema to them. As a relatively inexperienced project manager, I acquiesced. We scheduled meetings in an ad hoc manner, as they were needed. But as we got busier on the project, we focused on getting things done individually, and only met to talk about them as a group when there was a desperate need. At that stage it was often too late to provide good input, people didn't understand where the project stood, and there was general lack of cohesion and movement. The project limped along, never gaining the momentum it should have had.

Another project in which I was deeply involved was initially led by a much more experienced project manager, one rather known for being forceful. One of his first tasks was to put a two hour meeting on our calendars for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for a period of four months. It was a shocking appointment to receive in our in-boxes. But with that shock over, we settled into a great routine of thrice-weekly meetings where we had time to investigate and deliberate every aspect of the new program. And in the course of the four months, we designed and prototyped a really high quality system.

Even more interesting, the project manager changed twice during the project. Yet the momentum set by that initial project manager's schedule of meetings carried us through both transitions with barely a hitch.

There were other factors in each of the projects above that contributed to their success and failure, yet looking back I am astounded by the momentum that a simple schedule of meetings can generate. It is a tool that I will use myself in the future, and be less wary of impinging on people's time.