Meetings

Most meetings should be productive and brief.

If you have an all-hands meeting, keep it short. Set an agenda and only discuss things that everyone needs to be there to discuss. If you include an occasional “shout out” to celebrate above-and-beyond efforts of specific team members, make sure the recipients are picked using fair criteria—most people don’t respect either blatant favoritism or “participation trophy” rewards that everyone eventually gets just for showing up.

Have meetings with each work team separately for their separate projects, and stay on-topic, preferably with an agenda that your people know in advance, so that they can be prepared. Schedule enough time to cover what needs to be covered, but try to end early most of the time—don’t fill an hour with material that could have been covered in 20 minutes just because you have the conference room for the hour.

Have meetings for things that require interaction and discussion. If it’s just a one-way info dump, make it an email.

(image source: https://makesaasbetter.com/teamwork-memes/)