This is one of those blogs that could probably be a tweet and accomplish roughly the same thing, but it’s the first day after a long weekend, so sue me, ya know?
I hate managers who constantly need recurring check-in meetings with the people on their team. I understand the purpose, the idea, and the motivation, but here’s the “tea” on that:
- A good manager has regular, organic discussions with their direct reports throughout the day and the week. These discussions are about everything from tasks to deadlines to blockers to random pop culture stuff to bigger career questions.
- A bad manager can only talk to a specific direct report at 12pm on Wednesday, and that meeting is just a series of questions about tasks and deadlines and projects.
- Bad managers usually go with bad organizations, where every meeting is simply a boring listing of meetings, calls, and task items. It feels as if you’re advancing because you’re elucidating each other on all these tasks, but in reality you’re just running in place checking boxes and not accomplishing much of anything.
- Good managers usually go with good organizations, where the communication systems and channels are set up in such a way that organic conversations about whatever — including new ideas — can flow throughout the course of a week, instead of at prescribed times for “OK, fart me out your good ideas now.”
Agree/disagree?
Makes sense to apply the same principle of ongoing/continuous conversations about performance and career development being better than formal once/twice per year “performance review/development” discussions. Why wouldn’t that ongoing conversation concept apply to project-related updates, questions, new ideas, etc.?