Developing Meetings People Will Be Disappointed To Miss

“How disappointed will you be if we won’t have this standing meeting anymore?”

Let’s be honest - do any of you expect to see a “very disappointed” answer from the meeting participants? (If you do - let me know! I want to know your secret!)

If there’s anything competing with Agile in terms of how fast it’s losing favor, it is Meetings.

Meetings (call them Events, ceremonies, rituals) also play a significant role in what people dislike about Agile Frameworks such as Scrum and SAFe.

There’s another example, a somewhat funny one.

Ask people whose company adopted EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), and few of them will be disappointed with the loss of the “Level 10” weekly meeting.

This is ironic because the whole idea of the Level 10 meeting is that participants consistently consider it a 10/10 meeting.

So what can we do?

Try making all of your standing meetings optional. Not just for individuals. But for the team to decide they don’t want to have them.

What? The Scrum Team can choose to ignore their Sprint Planning meeting? yes.

The ELT can choose to ignore the EOS “Level 10” weekly meeting? yes.

The teams on the SAFe ART can skip PI Planning? yes.

Can the Portfolio Leadership team skip a Portfolio Sync or Review meeting? yes.

Here’s what you might see…

People have a say. They choose. They come as players, not as pawns.

They stop following processes by the book and start thinking about the intent and the context and stop

Whoever wants that meeting to happen needs to think hard about making it one people won’t want to miss.

They will need to start developing the meeting as a product people choose to use, an experience that works for them.