Tools to Decrease Meetings And Increase Performance

Meetings are a developer's nightmare. Then add pointless messages from your team into the mix and you’ve got a recipe for an unproductive workday.

At Origen Software, we use tools and tactics to build an approach to increase performance while mitigating the need for meetings or direct messages.

The goal of this newsletter is to show you how to extend the time yourself and your team can have in a focused state so that they can rather catch up on anything when they choose to, instead of being bombarded with meetings and messages that need their attention immediately.

Let’s dive in.

First Things First

Not all meetings are pointless. I'm definitely not saying that.

I'm more pointing out the fact that we've forgotten the core of what meetings should be used for - when a back-and-forth dialog needs to occur between two or more parties in order to align on a perspective or achieve a goal.

Same thing goes for direct messages. They aren't all pointless but starting a full conversation draws attention away when something could easily be explained or shared through other means.

Emoji Framework (Instead of replies or threads)

An emoji framework is simply a list of emojis that have a meaning associated.

Here are a few in ours:

👍 - I approve

💬 - I added comments

👀 - I'm looking into it

❤️ - I love this!

That means you don't need to start a thread of "I'll look into it" or "I approve".

The simplest and most fun thing to implement.

Clips (Instead of screen-share meetings)

The majority of our "explanation" styled conversations are done with Slack clips or Loom.

Instead of calling someone or setting up a meeting to show them anything that requires a screen share, we send them a recording.

In the recording, we spend a couple of minutes explaining or demonstrating whatever we need to and then share that recording with the intended audience.

They can then watch that and provide feedback in their own time.

Asynchronous implementation. Better results.

Comments (Instead of feedback meetings)

Don't set up a meeting to ask for feedback. We only allow that if it's urgent and needs an immediate answer.

Every tool or platform that you're using has some form of commenting and tagging system. Instead of setting up a session, commanding people to suddenly switch focus from their work to yours, rather just let them comment and provide their own feedback when they're ready to.

Add a comment and tag the relevant person.

You just got your feedback.

Documentation (Instead of most meetings)

I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in that could have just been broken down in a doc.

Or the classic phrase after a long meeting, "Okay, thanks guys. That's everything. But don't worry, I'll put it all in a doc for you". DO THAT FIRST.

We are not wired to retain the information that is presented to us in a meeting. And what happens if someone misses that meeting? They lose all context. You could record the meeting, sure, but who is going to find the time to catch up?

Just write good documentation from the start so that everyone can access and refer to it at any point. No meetings and no follow up messages asking something. Add all of it to the doc.

You'll save yourself and your team hours.

Platform Notifications (Instead of update messages)

You should be using Jira, Monday, Notion, DevOps or any other tool to manage your team and track output. All of those tools have built in notification systems that you should be using.

For example, set up a notification to go to your tester whenever a new ticket is ready for test. There is no need to message them directly and say "Hey, this is ready for you".

We use Slack and we use it's integration to notify us on everything. Pull requests, comments, client meetings, holidays, everything.

Let the platform do that work for you.

Use Automation (Instead of wasting time not having automation)

We automate everything. It's why we're so performant and why we can take on massive projects with a small team.

Someone edits a spreadsheet? The team gets notified of the changes.

A client has requested an update? An item is added to our team's "To Do" list.

We use Zapier which has an endless amount of useful integrations.

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Last Thing...

Communication and trust is key.

If you trust your team then the above will give you more time and increase your output.

If you enjoyed this issue, please forward it along to one other person who you think would find it valuable.

See you next week,

Harley