Last week I was in a meeting where I really felt things were getting done.

What was different?

I realized that meetings seem to fall into three categories:

Status’ seem to be the most painful and frequent. I think others suffer similarly because most tools/processes/approaches seem to focus on the 'status'. RAPID/RACI address decisioning, Agile Stand-up’s encourage quick updates. Tools like Jira/Confluence/Slack create running information dashboards that displace a need for an actual meeting.

Solving for me is one of the most fun meetings. When you get a bunch of bright people in a room ‘working a problem’ amazing things can happen. To do it right the environment must be safe; ‘criticizing ideas and not people’. The best idea wins.

A sharing meeting, is valuable and probably the one that people do the least. Someone on the team did something cool, different or is pitching an idea. There is an element of ‘discovery’. Many large companies don’t recognize the power or understand how to host and cultivate these meetings. Meetup’s/hackathons are all about sharing. But you don’t need a big event; I have been in some stand-ups where sharing is integral.

Automate/minimize the status, and focus on solving and sharing; it'll be more fun, and you'll be more effective.

Original Linkedin Post: http://bit.ly/2TUURxS

Stats from first week posted: