What Steve Jobs Taught Us About Meetings

We're getting pumped for the Less Meeting iPad app release.

This got me thinking...what would Steve Jobs think about Less Meeting? Or even, what did Steve Jobs think about meetings in general?

The Most Important Meetings Don't Happen in the Conference Room
There's a few lessons we can take from him, but one in particular sticks out.

You see, meetings aren't always neatly packaged, formal events.

You're not going to get a nice Outlook calendar invite every time you get together with your coworkers (and I'm not talking about bad meeting planners who don't send out an agenda before their meeting). Your traditional meetings aren't always going to be your most important either.

Yes they're great at keeping things moving day-to-day, but sometimes "water cooler" conversations are where the best stuff happens. This is where you find out what's really going on, realize what you were overlooking the whole time, and have those "AHA!" moments - all after the "real" meeting is over.

Pixar's Best Conference Room
When Jobs designed Pixar's office he realized the importance of these casual conversations. The result is the now-famous story of the giant open shared space he created at Pixar.

The Incredibles director Brad Bird sums it up best:

Then there’s our building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

As a result, you're constantly bumping into people, having those unexpected, yet inspiring idea creating events. Looking at Pixar's results, how can you argue it didn't work?

Now, just remember to keep your iPad handy so you can have a Less.Meeting Huddle next time it happens to you!


quote via Andrew Chen
image via Ain't It Cool News

Why Face to Face Meetings Are Still Critical to Your Business

I call it the 35,000 foot problem.

It's that it's expensive...frustratingly expensive...to travel to a business meeting. After a flight, a night at a hotel, meals, and a few odds & ends, your meeting costs $1,000 before it's even started.

Thankfully technology has solved the 35,000 foot problem. It's great what you can do with video conferencing. We've even praised it here, a number of times.


Intangible Benefits Are Worth More Than You Think
Rene Shimada Siegel over at Inc. wrote a great piece though that reminds us, face time really does matter.

She lists 5 reasons why you still need to meet in person. To me the most important is #4:

4. Read the body language. Facial expressions often communicate so much more than words. In their eyes and in their body language, we can see confidence, empathy, fear, friendliness or sincerity. That ability to “read” [the other person] is a huge advantage.

It's critical that managers and expense account owners remember you can't calculate the direct financial benefit of every part of a meeting.

Sure a status call will keep you up-to-date on how the project is going, but the side conversations you have walking out of the conference room together tell you what you really want to know.

How Do I Know When to Meet In Person?
If cost is still a factor (which of course it is), how do you strike a good balance? While it depends on what's most important to your organization, these 3 meetings are usually best in person:

1. Introductions
To work well with someone you need to have a certain amount of trust, or familiarity. This is very tough to create over the phone. Once this is established, your remote work improves greatly.

2. Crisis Management
On a previous project a few years ago, a vendor for my client refused to come on site during a key product outage due to costs. It ended up taking days, not hours, to get back up and running.

Trying to fix something over the phone and email cost us more in lost time than any flight could have cost.

3. Project Delivery
There's the familiar adage about judging a book by its cover, but what about a book without any cover? To me, delivering a project over email is just that.

So much of business is about perception, and I've found the best way to improve that perception is to do so yourself, in person.


Know the best part? LessMeeting works for any meeting - virtual or in person. Try it and see for yourself.


image

Google Wants You to Have Better Meetings Too

I remember years ago when I'd install a new software program - the first thing I'd do would be to comb the vast settings menus to tweak the program just to my liking.

I'd spend hours figuring out all the intricacies of each program till I knew all the ins & outs. (Embarrassingly I enjoyed doing this too.)

Fast forward to the app world we live in today. Thanks to better and simpler designs, you rarely need to spend any time on app settings pages. And that's a good thing.

However, I recently saw a couple great Google Calendar settings:

1. Speedy Meetings
Navigate to your Google Calendar Settings page and select the General tab. About a half-dozen entries down there's an option for Speedy Meetings.

This is fantastic - automatically end your meetings a few minutes early so you can get to your next meeting on time.

2. Daily Digest
It turns out Google has its own version of the Daily Digest too. Again go to your settings page and select the Calendars tab.

Locate the calendar you want and click Notifications. Toward the bottom you'll see an option to receive a daily email with your Daily Agenda.

Flip these two settings on, integrate your calendar with LessMeeting via our GCal & Google Apps Task sync, and you're set to go.

LessMeeting Mini Release: Huddles, Nested Agendas and More

Today we have a new LessMeeting mini release that introduces some new functionality and includes a handful of fixes and improvements. So what's new? Here are the highlights:

• Have a Huddle meeting
• See when Google last synced with LessMeeting
• Nested Agendas for meetings from GCal and CC

Meet Now! with a Huddle

Sometimes meetings happen at the spur of the moment. We call these meetings "Huddles". And since they happen last minute, you don't always have much time to set it up in LessMeeting.

Now all you need to do is just click the Quick Huddle option from your dashboard and you're set - that's it.

When did Google Calendar Sync Last?
The Google Calendar integration has been very popular since coming out of beta last month. We wanted to improve this experience to make it even easier to use.

As you can see above, the Google setup page now displays the most recent time that LessMeeting synced with your Google Calendar/Tasks.

Nested Agendas for Google and CC Users too
For some time Outlook users have been able to create nested agendas in their meeting invites. Now Google Calendar and CC@lessmeeting.com users can too.

To add a nested agenda, simply add a dash (e.g. "-") or lower case letter/roman numeral (e.g. "a.", "i.") below each agenda line. For example:

Agenda:
1. Using Dashes (5 min)
- nested agenda 
- nested agenda
2. Using Roman Numerals (10 min)
i. nested agenda
ii. nested agenda
3. Using Letters (5 min)
a. nested agenda
b. nested agenda

Check out the original post for more details about adding agendas and tags to your invites.

And of course we have some bug fixes and other improvements in this release. If you have any other features you'd like to see, or just have questions about using the new features in this mini release, email us at staff@lessmeeting.com or reach us on Twitter.