[MUSIC] Time is valuable and team meetings can be expensive. We like to think about synchronous meetings in terms of their ROI. In other words, if we've gone to the trouble of pulling everyone away from their workflow, how will we make sure we are adding value? Done well, meetings and collaboration sessions are hugely valuable and well worth the time. Here are some best practices to ensure your team is calling meetings for the right reasons and making them as impactful as possible. Every meeting must have an agenda. An agenda prevents knowledge leaks and creates a record of what was discussed. This shifts the memorization burden away from humans. If there's an agenda document affixed to each calendar invite, for example, you can easily search your calendar for keywords like marketing, CEO, engineering, etc. You can find a given meeting and immediately access a documented history of what was discussed. An agenda also creates a more inclusive meeting atmosphere. People can add questions and insights before and even after a synchronous meeting. This is inclusive of people on different time zones who may not be able to be there in person. Plus, those who are less comfortable verbalizing points in front of management can use the agenda document to properly articulate their complete thoughts. Finally, an agenda creates a takeaway. The agenda document lives longer after the meeting and it's easy to add action items. During the meeting itself, take comprehensive notes in the agenda document. It's not rude to focus on documentation in a meeting. In fact, a sure-fire way to waste time in a meeting is to avoid writing anything down. Meetings within an all remote company require documentation to be worthwhile. Also, always record the meeting. You can always delete an unwanted meeting recording, but it's better to have the option to keep it if you decide you want to access or share it later. This is particularly important if you want to present or wish to have a written transcription of the meeting. Zoom's Cloud recording supports transcription natively. Otter is another popular transcription tool. Start on time and end on time. Meetings pull everyone away from their normal workflow. After the meeting ends, a non-trivial amount of time is required for each attendee to regain focus on their tasks. While it's not always possible to schedule meetings in a way that they don't break up the flow of an ongoing project, it is important to begin and end meetings on time in order to minimize disruptions. When scheduling a meeting, we also value people's time and choose the speedy meetings setting in our Google calendars. This gives us meetings of, for example, 25 or 50 minutes, leaving some time at the end to write notes, stretch, etc, before continuing to the next call or meeting. How do you solve the problem of multitasking during a meeting? Many organizations struggle with this, and a common tactic is to require attendees to turn off other devices, mute their notifications, and remain focused on the meeting at hand. As an alternative, we recommend the exact opposite. At GitLab, we allow each team member to be the manager of their attention. It's completely acceptable to work on other tasks if what's happening in a meeting doesn't apply to you. Does this mean that occasionally we have to ask for something to be repeated? Yes, but we accept that as a normal occurrence. It's not embarrassing to ask for something to be repeated because you manage your own attention. You're free to engage with other work and then be pulled back into a relevant part of the meeting conversation. This reduces stress for people who have lots of meetings on their calendars and in a remote environment that is a common experience. This also means that some people will skip meetings when they have other priorities. That's another reason that you should aim to record all meetings, particularly when key individuals aren't able to join live. This allows team members to catch up on what transpired, adding context to notes that were taken during the meeting. Likewise, cancel unnecessary recurring meetings. Recurring meetings are often established as meaningful points along a given journey, but don't hesitate to cancel them after their purpose has been served. Cancelling meetings isn't an insult to the attendees. In fact, they'll probably appreciate having that time to focus on their priority work. A hybrid call means that you have a physical room with some meeting attendees sitting in it together, while other attendees are remote, hybrid calls should be avoided. It's much better to have everyone on a level playing field for communication and discussion. If a hybrid call must happen, however, everyone should use their own equipment, including cameras, headsets, and screens, even if they're physically sitting in the same room. This ensures that everyone is on the same playing field in terms of call experience. If possible, it's best to separate briefly and take the call from separate workspaces, creating a 100 percent remote call experience. This may seem a little silly to teams who aren't accustomed to remote work, but the experience is much more equal and inclusive and ultimately it empowers everyone, including remote attendees. In a co-located setting, collaboration often happens face-to-face with a white board on hand in a conference room. Working remotely sometimes feels like working on your own with your own calendar, your own schedule, and your own documents, but with a common goal with some strategic planning and with the right brainstorming tools, collaborating in a remote environment can be just as productive as collaborating in an office. Remote teams should aim to minimize their tool stack. It's good practice to consider how you can extract additional value from tools you already use. Google Docs is a great example of this. While Google Docs is a fantastic shared editing tool, GitLab also uses it as a remote white-boarding tool. Everyone can write not just the most senior people in the room. Multiple people can write at the same time. You can see what people are looking at. You can make suggestions, add screenshots and embeds, and even links to external resources. Of course, there are also multiple online design and whiteboard tools such as Mural and Figma, which are more visually oriented and allow for collaboration. Your design and product teams are likely to need a more sophisticated experience than the rest of the organization. For deep dives on how GitLab's UX, and design teams collaborate remotely, please see our linked resources.[MUSIC]
