How We Meet

My team meets a lot. We met a lot before we adjusted to working from home, and now we meet a lot just to stay connected. Hallway conversations have been replaced by slack messages and the few minutes of chat before a meeting starts on Google Hangouts. As a team, we're constantly refining how we work and we recently decided to put pen to paper to outline how we meet. We aren't looking to cancel all of our meetings (but some do need to go). Instead, we are hoping to improve the ways in which we meet and make our time together more meaningful.

What follows is a snap shot into how we meet. This document lives on our Google Drive and will evolve as our team evolves. I’ll make sure to keep this page updated as well. It will change as our needs change. Sharing it here in hopes that a similar exercise can help others save themselves from the pain of too many meetings and meetings that don't help you get your work done.

Thanks to the entire team who gave input here: Allison Kooser, Amanda Agundiz, Alyssa Billmeyer, Maddie Defino and Francesca Gattuso.

Monday Team Meeting

Purpose: 

To talk through high priority questions and topics so that the team can move forward throughout the week with clarity and direction.

Guidelines:

• Be on time.

• This is our big meeting each week, so we need to use the time with intention and purpose.

• Agenda items should be submitted to Ian by 10am on Mondays.

• Agenda items must be specific and should include 1-2 questions to answer or 1-2 decisions you’d like to make during our meeting.

• Whoever is running the meeting will determine whether or not to discuss the topics during the meeting or to ask that the questions/topics are presented on Slack.

• The meeting agenda will build in 5 mins for us to get settled and say hello. I missed you guys over the weekend!

• The meeting will continue to be a 45 minute discussion, but it will not go past 45 minutes. It can, however, end early.

Daily Standup

Purpose:

To check in with the team, answer questions, tear down roadblocks and celebrate wins.

Guidelines:

• Be on time.

• Come prepared with 2-3 questions, problems or tasks you need help resolving

• It's okay to say you have nothing to cover today.

• This is not a status meeting, so don’t run through a laundry list, we’re on the call to help support you, so make sure you set us up for success!

• Also bring something fun every morning — a fun fact, a story, a trivia question, something you’re loving, a joke...whatever! This is our daily team time, so we get to be all team-y and have fun. 

• These calls should not last longer than 15 mins, but can end early.

All Other Meetings

Guidelines:

• Be on time.

• Before you schedule a meeting, ask these questions: What does this meeting need to solve? What answer do I need to get? And do I need a meeting in order to get that answer? 

• Only invite people who need to make decisions or will help inform others who will make decisions, but make sure you keep any relevant team members aware of the meeting so they are not surprised. When you make your attendee list, see if you can delete someone (or multiple someones) before you send invites. 

• Provide an agenda in the meeting notes or as a separate email ahead of time. This should be based on the question from step one: the thing you need the meeting to solve. 

• Schedule meetings for the tightest time frame you can, they’ll take as long as we let them. Don’t feel constricted to multiples of 15 minutes. 

• Follow every meeting with notes that outline what was discussed, provide context and what the outcomes were -- remember these are your notes, so they're only helpful if you know what they mean. These notes can be distributed to attendees and others. Allow the attendees to amend the notes if they have a comment or remember something different. Allow the non-attendees to ask questions about something in the notes.

• End meetings early or on time and if you are going to run over, be sure to ask if everyone is able to give you more time or schedule a follow up meeting for another day/time.