How to Attend Meetings

Cultural Reality vs. Ideal of “Meetings Are a Choice”

• Many strongly agree with the slides in principle but say they’re unrealistic in most orgs: declining invites often reads as “not a team player.”
• Some report cultures where asking “what’s the agenda / why am I needed?” and declining is normal; others say even as senior leaders they face backlash for saying no.
• A recurring view: you must understand your company’s politics, leadership, and your own seniority before pushing back.

Meetings as Social, Power, and Visibility Mechanisms

• Several argue meetings are the “social” part of work: relationship-building, marketing your work, and signaling interest in projects.
• Attending low-value meetings is often a cheap way to show “I care about this group”; skipping can harm relationships or future staffing decisions.
• Others warn against over‑investing emotionally in fixing everything via meetings; balance caring with self‑preservation.

Agendas, Facilitation, and Alternatives

• Strong support for: clear agenda (especially for long/large meetings), a single “driver,” documented notes and action items.
• “No agenda, no attenda” (optionally with manager backing) is proposed as a norm; auto‑decline during “focus time” or “out of office” blocks is used by some.
• Status/update meetings are contentious: some call them pure anti‑pattern that should be docs/emails; others say async channels are too messy and live Q&A is often the fastest way to align.

What Meetings Are Actually Good For

• One camp: meetings should mostly be for decision‑making, consensus, or highly interactive brainstorming; spectators are usually wasted time.
• Another camp: the deck underrates open‑ended discussion; meandering, unstructured conversations can surface unknown unknowns and build camaraderie.
• Brainstorming: some dislike it entirely or only tolerate very small groups; others say small coder‑only, agenda‑less sessions can be extremely valuable.

Recording, Tools, and Change Management

• Enthusiasm for recording + transcription + LLM summaries to reduce required attendance and capture decisions; multiple tools cited.
• Concerns: legal discovery, discomfort being recorded, AI summaries that are too blunt for politics.
• Several note that “better meeting hygiene” docs rarely move the needle without top‑down enforcement and changed incentives; prior startups and consulting efforts struggled to get orgs to pay to fix meeting culture.