How to Run a Remote Team Meeting
Running meetings that people do not feel like a waste of time requires a framework that makes sure the typical ways the meeting can go sideways are safe-guarded. Finding the best meeting structure is hard, many times takes many iterations, but we've been testing Zapier's approach, and it's working out for us really nicely.
Goals of a Meeting
Define clear goals, otherwise meeting go easier sideways and people get lost in unimportant details.
Make work visible: people feel better when they see others are doing their part
Get unstuck: many times we need others to make decisions that are not our responsibility - plus external input and a fresh set of eyes on a problem can help us re-focus onto the right direction.
Frequency
- Meet weekly for standups, on average
- One-on-ones on average one, max two times.
- The amount of work that got done and presented is meaningful for us weekly.
- We prefer Tuesdays/Wednesdays so that we have a day before to recap, and there is still time after it to address issues that came up on the meeting within the week.
- (We are all working part time somewhere between 10-20 hours)
Structure
Meetings are an awful place for information sharing.
- Preparation: each team member is to write down the following:
- Things I said I'd do till this meeting and their results
- Other issues that came up, anything blocking
- Things I'm doing after the meeting
- Instead of verbally expressing, write it down (Jeff Bezos on why) with full sentences.
- People do not have to read this up front, the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting is reading this
- then comes the discussion part, where you ask questions.
Discussion
- Give people limited time to ask questions (5 minutes)
- This avoids the domination of certain topics.
- It forces people to ask the most relevant questions.
- ... and let's everyone's questions to be addressed.
- most of the time the platform to discuss most of that are not belonging to the whole group
- If you have more questions than 5 minutes, it means that the relevant parties should have a separate meeting.
- Someone has to be the designated time keeper up front.
- Rotate who's the timekeeper, who starts, and who's note taker.
Ever since this has been part of my life, it's much easier to work with the team, rarely if ever had the feeling that I'm sitting on a meeting pointlessly.
productivity remote-work