Move

Chapter 13Stop Having Status MeetingsGo Faster and Reduce Risk

What Everybody Is Thinking

I'm bored!

Status meetings are boring. They waste time. They do not move the business forward.

I think the epidemic of status meetings takes root when new managers have a staff meeting (because they know they are supposed to have staff meetings), but they are not sure what to do in their staff meeting, so they ask each person to give a status update about their work. What ensues is basically a series of one-on-one meetings between the manger and each team member while everyone else is watching (or doing email).

Then this type of behavior can also move into bigger forums, which turn into things like phase review meetings and quarterly business reviews. These meetings have lots more people from multiple teams in a room for hours or days on end to review the status of multiple projects at a level of detail that makes you want to kill yourself. To picture this meeting, imagine 30 people sitting in a room and not paying attention to the one person who is standing in the front of the room talking about slides that are densely populated with detail.

Almost everyone is looking at their laptops.

Then for each presenter there is someone in the audience who tries to sound like they are interested and accountable, who asks a couple of pointed questions to appear to be uncovering a deep insight or exposing a risk.

If you truly want to keep your strategy moving forward, stop having status meetings. ...