STOP MAKING MEETINGS ON FRIDAY
Some thoughts on how to make better use of the week
In consulting, time is everything.
As consultants, rarely, if ever in one’s whole career, will a project be the perfect amount of time, with the perfect amount of resources, blended with the right knowledge and attention from the client.
Something always falls out of whack, squeezes you in one area or another, thus thrusting time back into the spotlight.
I’ve always loved that. The challenges it creates, tend to force new ways of thinking and working.
Like a stream that’s suddenly blocked, given the right amount of pressure and it’ll quickly reroute and create new grooves.
For me, this has taught me to look at the days of the week differently, and best to utilize a ‘feel’ framework to each of the days. Prioritizing some days as beloved periods of intense heads down work- while others, recognizing that people seem to just have a hell of a time paying attention.
I do like swimming upstream, but I’ve come to realize that such efforts demand a lot of energy and it’s best to save it for when it’s able to create the biggest impact.
I do like swimming upstream, but I’ve come to realize that such efforts demand a lot of energy and it’s best to save it for when it’s able to create the biggest impact.
Take meetings as an example.
Like all things in life, I love and hate them.
A well formed meeting can leave one refreshed, with a new sense of what’s possible and the satisfaction that comes with productivity.
A well formed meeting can leave one refreshed, with a new sense of what’s possible and the satisfaction that comes with productivity. Throw in some pleasant dialogue and you have a wonderful human experience.
The banality of evil has its root in meetings.
On the flip side, meetings can be dreading, seemingly never ending vortexes that suck all life, thought, creativity and sensibility out of a group of people. The banality of evil has its root in meetings.
At some point, the intersection in the duality of meetings came to connect with my theory of daily ‘feels’. Out of that clash of titans, came my Thursday roundup.
At any given time, I may be running 5 different teams across my company and my clients ( sometimes it’s even been up to 8 ).
Each of these teams are across domains, likely even projects, and certainly time zones. Research may be in Chicago, front-end in Austin and LA, NLP developers in Pakistan, ML team in Belarus and then there’s business teams, clients and partners.
To maximize my mental capacity and that of my teams, I’ve implemented a weekly cadence where each of the teams meets once per week to do a status and check in.
Prior to the meeting they send out notes and update trello as to their status, pacing, questions and problems.
Then after a short informal ‘how the hell are y’all,’ we review where everyone is through a demo of the product, or a team lead presenting status. We answer problems / questions / feedback, before everyone goes off after and digests it.
This gives the leadership and product members, or the client, the ability to critique what’s presented, but also gives the team an extra day to work through any critiques.
Communication and knowledge should have been set in such a way, that no critique or issue takes longer than a day to fix.
THIS IS HUGE
What this means, is that issues, fixes and the like, all get solved while everyone’s minds are fresh and able.
No more Friday status meetings and trying to work through updates in a Monday meeting, after everyone had their brain whipped over the weekend. Where no one remembers where they individually were, let alone what the feedback was.
I’m also one for being very picky as to when and what days have meetings, but, I’ll save that for another day.
