EPISODE 9 - Organisation: How to survive all those Meetings?

Michael Seidl: Welcome to a new episode of the Get Shit Done in IT podcast. My name is Michael Seidel. And today I want to talk with you about your favorite thing you can do in your work, having meetings. So I want to share my opinions on my insights, on my learnings, on how to survive all those meetings. So everybody loves meetings, right? No, not really. So let me tell you my insights and my findings on how to make the best out of meetings and not to struggle with too many meetings and too long meetings or whatever. So I found three to four things I want to share with you. And the first one is, or should be an easy one, if you send a meeting. So if you are the organizer of a meeting. make sure that you write the text, the expectations, all the information, the roadmap of the meeting in the meeting invitation, or at least in a link, then they can find the text, whatever. So it should be clear for everyone. So what is that meeting for? What is the purpose of those meetings? What is the expectations? What is the result? We... Or what is the achievement so that we can say the meeting was a success. And that's very important. So everybody is in the same boat, has the same sight, the same feeling. What is the meeting about and what is the expectation? And this just a few sentences or a few words, maybe you should put in that meeting. So, and if you are... only an attendee, you can ask the organizer to fill that information. Of course, it might be complicated if that is your customer or your boss or whatever, but at least a good title or one or two sentences, what the goal of this appointment is, should be a goal for everyone and is easier for everyone to be prepared for that meeting.

Michael Seidl: Especially if maybe the meet, you talk with the customer. So usually you talked about that meeting when something is coming or maybe not, but the meeting is then maybe weeks or months in the future. So you don't remember when the meeting happens, what you talked. So the organizer, in my opinion, is responsible to make sure to fill that information in the appointment or in any other system. But so everyone. or every attendee knows what the meeting is about. The next thing is...

Michael Seidl: Maybe that's a tough one, maybe hard to follow, but at least you can try. If you can do it, it's just how you can do it. You can leave a meeting or you just can decline a meeting. So of course, if your boss or your customer is sending you a meeting, it's not so easy to just say, no, don't like. But... At least you can ask the organizer what is your role in that meeting and is it really necessary that I be an attendee of this meeting the whole time from beginning to the end? Or is it just okay to stay beside and stay ready so if you need me you can call me in that meeting. So at least that's questions. should be okay to ask and just to see if you really need it or maybe just to ask, I'm not sure why I should attend this meeting, so I want to prepare. If the organizer cannot tell you a good answer, you can ask them, so why should I attend? And if you are an organizer, at least I would recommend to use the feature like you do in the email, you do the to sender to... those who really need to do anything with the emails and the CC just for information. And such as nearly the same system is for the appointment. So you have required attendees and optional attendees. And so we, I use it if I have an optional attendee, I'm not expecting that he is attending the meeting from the start to the end. Okay. So, If I need him, I can call him in, ask him some questions or give me some input and then he can leave and do other things. But that's a tool you can use to have required and optional attendees. And so the attendees knows, okay, I should attend the meeting or it is okay to stay at line and stay ready if they need you. That's the second thing. The third.

Michael Seidl: thing is there is some rules, some hidden rules or unwritten rules that a meeting has to be an hour, half a day, a full day or whatever, but without any specific reason. So if you are the organizer of that meeting, make sure that you only plan the time you really need. It hasn't to be always an hour or two hours or four hours. It's also okay to have a meeting about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, one and a half hour, one hour, 15 minutes. Okay. So in my opinion, if there is a meeting for one hour, you will do that. You expand your doings to that hour. If you do the same meeting for half an hour, you will You will compress, you will come to the point, you will focus and you will make sure that you solve everything in that half an hour. So this also can help you to reduce the workload or the meeting time of your day to make sure that the meeting is only as that long as it needs to be. Okay? And also the same if you will be invited to a meeting and it's two hours and you don't understand why. You can ask the organizer, hey, maybe it's okay to have it one hour, or maybe it's okay to have it, I don't know, 40 minutes or so, because I think we will solve this in shorter time. So this really can help you to have less meeting time and be more productive. So there is no rule that the meeting has to be an hour, two hours, four hours, or eight hours. Trust me. Okay, I work a lot with Microsoft, but I... Also other tools you can do meetings not only for an hour or two, you can also do 20 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever you need. So make sure the meeting is only as long as you really need it. And there is no rule that you have to do an hour, two, four or whatever. And the last thing is, and there is a funny sentence.

Michael Seidl: What reminds me on that is this meeting could have been an email. So if you're an organizer and you're sending out a meeting where you just want to spread some information, you don't want to get any feedback, I don't know, just to inform about any maybe not so important stuff in your company, then ask yourself, is it really needed to have a meeting for this with, I don't know, 10, 15, whatever people? Or is it just okay to send an email with a few bullet points and that's it? So that's also something I see a lot of meetings out there, what really could have been an email. And so ask yourself if you're an organizer and want to make sure that your colleagues stay productive and not stay the whole day and weeks in meetings. Ask yourself, is this meeting really needed or necessary? And... maybe I can write it in an email, maybe I can use, I don't remember the name, but Microsoft has video recording stuff, other companies has it, you can record a video and send them in Teams, in Slack, whatever. So maybe they can watch it, I don't know, on the way home or during lunch break or whatever, it doesn't have to be a meeting. So... If you're the organizer, make sure, maybe think about if it's really needed to have this meeting or can it be an email? Yeah. So to summarize the topics, make sure that every appointment has at least a few lines of what is the purpose of this meeting versus the expectations and what are the information we need before, for example. Make sure... that you only invite people who really need it and have optional attendees and yourself ask the organizers if it's really needed that you need to be there or maybe it's just stay in line and wait if they need you and you can do something else. Third is there is no rule that meetings has to be exactly an hour, two, four or eight or whatever. So you can have meetings with 20 minutes, 50 minutes, one hour and 10 minutes, whatever. So...

Michael Seidl: Make sure you only block a meeting time as long as you really need it and not what maybe suits you or maybe you think it is good. So there is no rule that a meeting needs to be exactly an hour. And the last thing is before you send the meeting, is this meeting really necessary or could it be an email or a Slack message or Teams message or Teams video or whatever? So that's something you should keep. Keep in mind. So that's it for this episode of the Get Sh** Done in IT podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know. Maybe you have some more insights, some more ideas. Let me know in the comments or you can contact me on LinkedIn. And if you have any questions for the podcast, I should answer. I would be happy to do it. So contact me on LinkedIn. You can send me your message as a text or... voice message, whatever you prefer. And so thanks for listening. See you next week. Stay productive. Bye bye.