When Communication Actually Works

Meetings don’t have to be a complete waste of time

Generally meetings are an excuse for people to get together and talk about their ideas and viewpoints while avoiding getting actual work done. At least that’s been my experience over 10 + years of sitting through round-tables, daily-updates, and presentations. I get it, we want to share what we’ve been working on and talk about our thought’s about this project or that venture. Yet very little actually get’s done in these meetings unless you have one of those meeting ninja’s who leaves with bullet points and action plans (i.e. my partner).

I personally tend to drift off and think about all the things I could be doing while people are rambling on about their complaints or suggestions, such as coding, writing, or even gaming if I’m honest. This is why I’m notorious for avoiding, or even skipping meetings I don’t see as valuable. My first question to a meeting invite is ‘Why do I need to be there?’ If there’s not a legitimate answer I’m not going to show.

Yet yesterday I saw the value in meetings and why they can be so valuable in the right context with the right purpose. I’ve been increasingly frustrated with my current startup because there was simply a lack of direction. Yes our intention was to train software developers, but that’s a pretty broad idea. Especially when when our primary investor is an international development company. Can you think of any better way to stimulate economies and improve living standards of 3rd world countries than to train people in a skill they can literally do from anywhere as long as they have an internet connection?

Yet we are licensing a curriculum from a school whose entire business model is based on getting new developers 6 figure jobs in tech. Basically this means their market is white males with expendable income and time on their hands. Yet no one seemed to be talking about the fact that they had nothing to offer us if we wanted to adapt the curriculum to real projects our parent company was just waiting to throw to us. One of my students helped me set up a meeting, and the floodgates opened. We found out that there was an endless amount of projects they needed done, not only internally but for bid’s in foreign countries.

We’d been having plenty of meetings internally with our 3 person team, but apparently no one was talking with the people we needed to talk to that were just waiting for our students to jump in and start coding. By simply getting the right people in the right room, we made more headway on determining our direction in 30 minutes than we have the last 3 months. I was honestly on the verge of going back to coding full time and hanging up my teaching hat before last night.

So are meeting’s generally a waste of time? Probably, but not if you get people communicating that normally would not be. It’s easy to assume that people are talking to each other, especially at the top. You would think with executives sitting in offices all day they would be spending a lot of time conversing and planning together, but you know what they say about assuming…

Normally I don’t write about work and productivity stuff, but I think this is an important observation to share. Communication is essential to all areas of our life, whether it’s work, friendships, or intimate relationships. More often than not, if there’s a problem or lack of progression, it’s probably because the right people aren’t sitting down and talking about it.

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