Do you believe in setting guidelines for meetings? Or are they bureaucracy?

We do believe in them, so we're live with our product Meeting Guidelines! You can support the launch here https://www.producthunt.com/posts/meeting-guidelines?r=h Others that believe: Take Netflix, they have a "No Rules" culture and still, they have meeting guidelines. Elon Musk has guidelines as well for Spacex and Tesla, such as avoid large meeting and don't hold recurrent ones. The most famous right now may be Shopify, who claim that meetings are a bug and if you need them it's because some API is missing. What do you think?

Replies

John Xie
Taskade AI Mobile: Supercharge Workflows
Taskade AI Mobile: Supercharge Workflows
Definitely, guidelines are a must! At the very least, some structure and theme, and regular sync helps build team culture and ensures everyone is on the same page.
Most of the time guidelines can provide structure which in turn contributes to efficiency:)
Rohan Chaubey
Many congrats on the launch :)
angel william
Increased efficiency: Clear guidelines like agendas, time limits, and participant roles can prevent rambling, unnecessary discussion, and ensure meetings stay focused on achieving specific goals.
Annie Chopra
I think meeting guidelines are important specifically in regards to time, I have seen way too many companies expend time on meetings of hours long- which makes absolutely no sense because IMO it reduces overall productivity. Congrats on your launch, checkin it out now!
Christin Koehler
Don't let bureaucracy fossilize your meetings. Keep them dynamic and responsive to the team's needs.
Roberto Gómez - Scalar.so
@christin_koehler thanks! any example of how you do this?
Alexander Dolton
Potential for stifling creativity: Rigid guidelines might stifle spontaneous ideas and brainstorming, hindering out-of-the-box thinking and innovative solutions.
Darcy Andrews
Increased accountability: Guidelines can help to ensure that everyone comes to meetings prepared and that they are held accountable for their contributions.
Huudle AI Project Assistant
some of them are bureaucracy and needed to be resolved...however i never see that guidelines are helping to bring effectiveness :/ therefore we are building huudle.io
Daria Sokolovskaya
It's always great to have a plan before the meeting. It makes it more structured and less time consuming.
Guidelines? Meh. Meetings should be organic conversations, not constrained by checklists. Trust in good communication and collaborative spirit.
Roberto Gómez - Scalar.so
@amy_g_debnam Hey Amy! Thanks for the feedback. You are an engineer who need focus time, do you think you could achieve it in a big company without any control on how to communicate with each other?
Jacob Choi
When our team meets via zoom it helps us hammer out important details more easily, and when we meet in person that is when the meetings become less rigid and there is more creative room. I find both formats to be very necessary and helpful for us! :)
Violetta Chernobuk
Actually, we tried both scenarios. And it turned out that having no guidelines at all just makes a mess out of the meeting. There have to be at least an agenda and timing. We also make everything we discuss visible with board planning and such tools like Miro to take notes.
PRIYANKA MANDAL
Sure i believe in setting guidelines for meetings! It is essential for efficiency and productivity. Love that you've launched Meeting Guidelines. Checked it out on Product Hunt, and it looks fantastic. I am a fan of how even companies like Netflix, SpaceX, Tesla, and Shopify approach it differently.
Kirill Grebenjukov
This is so great and deep subject! I believe that meeting is something you must do because team can do much more together than individuals. Like 1 + 1 + 1 might be much more than 3. But to have such synergy you should build your team and meetings is one of the key tools to do it. One obvious goal of the meetings is coordination and to achieve this goal guidelines are super helpfull. But there also another goal - trust building. You are the team only if you have high level of trust between members and trust is a result of knowing each other and of non-just-work relationships. So I strongly believe that during a meeting there should be also free time to small talks, flood, non-work talks that all helps to learn each other better and open doors for non-work relationships and trust as the result.
Matej Cabadaj
In my opinion - whatever it takes to make them only as long, as they actually need to be. I really dislike the feeling of sitting on a call, knowing it could have been a 3-line email 😅
Johannes Kraus
I think especially in mainly remote teams it is super necessary