There’s a common factor to all of your 1:1s, so that may be worth looking into.
Like the author, I have had some ongoing 1:1s be incredibly productive. Like really changing my life. Unlike the author, I wouldn’t broadly recommend them. They’re so easy to do in a way that isn’t productive. I think that’s the default, really. So if I was going to tell people to do them I’d be very explicit that you need to do something different than you probably think. Here are exacts steps and characteristics, if you don’t follow these then it won’t work and don’t come to me about it.
The overall general trend of why they’re not effective is they’re too surface level. You say some updates to your boss in a way that doesn’t get you fired, maybe complain about some stuff. You kinda just talk about things.
It needs to be a time when there is some work really happening. It’s metawork, but it’s still work. Like “what were the things that distracted you last week?” and you write them down, there in the meeting. Not “anything distracting you lately?” “nope I’m fine”. It’s a much more vulnerable, interactive process. This is probably why a 1:1 with your boss isn’t the most effective person. Too much image to maintain.
I think the sports model is better. In baseball, the Manager (coach or head coach in other sports) makes decisions about who is playing. Coaches (aka assistant coaches or trainers) are skill experts who help you get better. You can be more vulnerable with them. I think some industries, especially software, would do well to have more of a manager/coach model.
Sometimes, often even, there just isn't anything that needs to be said. I feel the same way about standups and 1:1s.
Meetings should be treated like investments: by spending the time of the participants, are you going to reap the rewards of time saved in the future?
Sometimes there is information that does need to change hands, often there just isn't, and meetings take away considerably more time than they take by breaking people out of work that isn't always easy to pick right back up.
Meetings are often just babysitting for managers, keeping them entertained and engaged when they don't have anything better to do (or preventing them from doing the things they need to be doing necessitating hiring more managers who make more meetings and result in less time available per person)
So many standups and 1:1s I've been in have just been an exercise in all parties thinking of something to say because it is presumed stuff needs to be said.
It's poor management if you have nothing to say and the 1on1 goes on for the full block anyway. With my reports in the past I'd hold the block open for a long conversation if they needed it, but if they showed up and really didn't have much, then that was it, end of meeting. This is pretty much how all meetings should work, imo.
To be fair, I do still think it's worth showing up to the meeting even if you think there's nothing to be said beforehand, since sometimes breaking out of the routine gives you the opening you need to get something off your chest. Sometimes it's possible to get overly caught up in the flow, which can be useful for solving the immediate problem, but might hide other stuff that hasn't been given room to breathe. Meetings like 1on1s and retrospectives are opportunities to take that break.
A 1 minute meeting can be as bad as an hour meeting if you're interrupting deep work.
I don't need to "get something off my chest" every week, most people don't.
There is of course value to communication, but managers without better things to do are trying to have it far too frequently. It is also much easier to schedule meetings as needed and keep the frequency of the regularly scheduled ones on as long a period as possible.
If you know that you have a scheduled meeting coming up, and then you scheduled your "deep work" to run over the top of it, that's not great time management on your behalf. It's also potentially a symptom of inefficient scheduling, since it should be possible to schedule meetings (especially 1on1s) at a time of day that is least disruptive for the participants.
I do know how easy it is to get in the zone as a developer, and subsequently feel frustrated that a useless meeting just popped up in the middle of your flow, but that's not a good reason to write off 1on1s entirely. Worst case your flow will be interrupted once a week. Two if your team has a weekly retrospective as well. If two interruptions per week is significantly damaging your productivity, something is wrong.
Personally, I am not a fan of meetings in general, and I do consider many of them to be useless. But 1on1s and retrospectives are the two that I mandate in the teams that I lead - one is for the health of my reports, and the other is for the health of the team. All other meetings can and should be optional. If someone is feeling snowed under by all the other meetings, then it's exactly during the 1on1 or retro when those feelings can be shared. If you don't have those meetings, then you're relying on everyone on the team to always speak up whenever they need help, and while that might work for certain, very assertive and/or self-centered employees, it doesn't work for everyone. For that reason I think it's important to schedule these times in deliberately to give people the opportunity to express themselves.
When there isn't a culture of open communication - which is established through regular meetings of this sort - many employees find it difficult to be honest about their challenges and difficulties (on the negative side) or goals and aspirations (on the positive side). In either case I believe it improves productivity and retention to give employees dedicated space to talk about that stuff.
If I have a standup at 10am every day, this guarantees that I'm not going to ever get anything substantial done before 10am. A 3pm weekly meeting can mostly destroy my ability to get in to deep work for that afternoon.
I don't "schedule" deep work, it is a thing that happens as a combination of what needs to be done, the time available, minor tasks, and interruptions.
Daily and weekly meetings significantly reduce the surface area available for these things to happen, and often serve as a source of boredom and frustration, being in a room with people who obviously don't have anything to say, saying words because they're supposed to.
If you feel that all of these meetings are significantly impacting your ability to deliver your work on-time, and your experience was shared by everyone on your team, that should have come out in a retrospective, and your team should have decided to scratch those useless meetings. If your team never had a space where you could discuss and act on things that you find to be disruptive, then that's exactly the reason why your manager needs to make sure you have that space. Or, if you did have that space, and you did share your feelings, and it turned out that you were unique and everyone else finds these regular meetings useful, then it might be worth thinking about why it is that you don't get anything out of these meetings but other people do. Then it might be worth speaking with your manager to see if the team - or the position - is a good fit for you.
The whole point of 1on1s and retrospectives is to optimize your work. If you literally only have these two meetings per week and you still find that unreasonably disruptive, then you could discuss dropping them to once a fortnight. If you still find those two meetings per fortnight unreasonably disruptive, and you really get absolutely zero benefit from them whatsoever, perhaps you should be working as an independent contractor and not a salaried employeee with a team of colleagues and a manager.
I do understand where you're coming from. I have had several direct reports who never had anything at all to say in their 1on1s, who had no interest in setting goals, no interest in advancing in the company, no interest in improving their workflow, who honestly just wanted to sit down, do the work, get paid, go home. That's fine, and it's useful to have some people on the team who want to work that way, but they really are a minority of people I have worked with in "normal" company environments. To be frank, I would prefer to work that way myself, but that's not really how most companies operate, because most companies are geared for growth, so it's not enough to just stay at the same level of productivity forever. The goal for most companies is to continuously improve and increase their output, forever. This is why most companies see value in having these meetings, because they are a way to focus employees on becoming ever more productive.
I would recommend you read Deep Work by Newport. It's not parent commenter's inefficient scheduling or his opinion; even just knowing you have a stop coming up interrupts the deep work process. Every meeting is incredibly disruptive on both sides of it.
I don't disagree that standups and 1on1s are often empty, but the point is to have a planned point of contact. Think of it more like regular maintenance of the social machine. It helps you not succumb to really preventable issues. They provide an obvious scheduled point to raise issues that do come up, without them people often bottle stuff up until the failure point is hit.
There is value too in scheduling a 1on1 that is easy to cancel. It's easy enough to quickly check if it's necessary, if it isn't, no worries.
Our experiences clearly differ, so I'm not really going to engage in whether or not you're right because I just haven't had that experience at all.
At the end of the day it's just two colleagues in a room, if you can't get anything done with that, there's either nothing to get done or you couldn't get it done.
Sometimes, often even, there just isn't anything
that needs to be said. I feel the same way about
standups and 1:1s.
So end them early. Nothing wrong with ending a standup after a few minutes. Same with 1:1's.
Meetings should be treated like investments: by
spending the time of the participants, are you
going to reap the rewards of time saved in the future?
Agree with your premise; disagree with your conclusion.
Let's assume a 40-hour work week. (lol, I know)
Daily standups should be <= 15 minutes. Let's also suppose we're doing biweekly 30 minute 1:1s.
That's 1.25 hours per week, combined. Of course the real productivity loss of a meeting can be greater if it pulls you out of a "flow" state. Let's assume some of these rituals also incur a "flow state interruption" penalty of 30 additional minutes of lost productivity. So the total productivity cost is 2-3 hours per week per team member, or roughly 6% of their theoretical productive time.
I think this is a reasonable overhead. Working on a team requires communication. This seems like an efficient way to do it.
What's the alternative? Communicate whenever you feel like it? That's extremely iffy to put it mildly even if everybody on the team is an amazing communicator, which is an extremely unlikely ideal state of affairs. Adding a little structure makes sure the communication actually happens.
> Sometimes there is information that does need to change hands, often there just isn't
This really cuts to the point of what I’m trying to express. The general model of meetings is that they are there for exchanging information. One issue with this is something you’ve pointed out, that people feel compelled keep the meeting but there’s no information to share. So there’s just nothing.
There’s a second issue. There are things you can do through talking with another person that aren’t just sharing information. If you only see meetings as a way for information to change hands, you can’t see these options. I find it hard to put into words, but I’ll try to give some examples.
You could change how you feel about something by talking about it. A concern that is too scary to fully think about could be spoken about so you can face it. There’s value in talking about it that’s separate from the information sharing or even the problem solving.
You could generate ideas. One person creates space and the other fills it by coming up with new ideas.
You could understand something better by explaining it (see Duck, Rubber).
You could set an intention. Having the memory of telling someone you’ll do something may make you more likely to do it (separate from them holding you accountable).
You could practice what you’ll say in some other situation. Maybe one sided practice, maybe role play.
All of these are a sort of “talking as doing”. It’s a very different gear from “talking as information sharing”. I’ve found it can be really hard to get people to change those gears. It’s odd. It’s not like they’re directly resistant, they just seem unaware. It’s like someone holding their lunch in a park wondering where we’re going to eat. Here! Go ahead! I don’t want to hear about you being alive, I want to see it!
You're basically just describing therapy sessions.
I don't need daily group therapy with my team or weekly individual therapy with my manager.
There's not that much to say, I can't invent that much to say, people rarely need that much communication.
I don't need to brainstorm ideas daily/weekly, don't need to set intentions. I often know what needs to be done for long stretches and am more than capable of communicating it ad hoc when it is most useful to communicate it. We have at our disposal half a dozen forms of communication, forced regular meetings can be the worst kind.
You seemed to have focused on the two of my five examples that could be considered therapy sessions.
Look, I don't care if you do one on ones, standups, whatever. No need to tell me you don't need them. I don't even know you. I'm just trying to share some ideas with you and anyone reading.
Have you ever tried to get standups or 1:1s to stop once started in a company with that culture? I have, more than once, and was never successful because people treat them like they’re necessary and my whole point is that they aren’t and to refute the article claiming they are unreasonably effective.
Agreed. There are a few reasons why this falls over:
1. This process requires trust from both parties. Often this doesn't exist, and manufacturing trust is basically impossible. This requires a happy and healthy workplace, and unfortunately, many people do not work in these.
2. This is an excellent opportunity to extract information from an employee which otherwise wouldn't see the light. I.e. are there issues which should be discussed? Things making them unhappy and unproductive? Is someone bullying them? Are their teammates dropping the ball? Are there problems in their teams I could help with? Are there problems at home? Do they need some time off so they're refreshed and ready to go afterwards? All of these things require, as above, trust. They can be used to great success. Sadly some workplaces formalise these and instead use 1:1s as a way to grade employees. This means the employee is extremely unlikely to expose any kind of weakness or vulnerability.
3. Shooting the shit isn't usually productive (but can build rapport). Likewise, status updates are not necessarily productive when a status email will do. The purpose is to dig deeper. Inasmuch, I have a OneNote dedicated for my 1:1 where I record thoughts and ideas throughout the week. I select a few of these during the 1:1 to dig into. Sometimes nothing eventuates. Sometimes they become larger discussions.
What do you suggest i'd look into? I said i've never walked out of a 1x1 and thought it was "unreasonably effective". And when I discussed features of my 1x1s I discussed the majority. Sure there have been occasional nuggets of gold but I'd hardly consider it the primary outcome of majority of 1x1s. Feel like you're attempting to evaluate my 1x1s based on a couple of sentences I wrote in response to a hyperbolic clickbaitey title.
I don’t mean to evaluate your 1x1s. I was taking you at your own evaluation.
I read an article saying how great 1x1s are and how they worked surprisingly well in a new situation. Then I saw your comment that said you disagree and had some descriptions that I would take it to mean you don’t like 1x1s. You also described the broadness of your experience (thousands, countless people, both sides).
So, I tried to indirectly (sort of as a joke) point out that in one way your experience is not broad.
I’ll say it more explicitly: You are in all of your 1x1s. If you’ve had many 1x1s with many people, we can pretty certainly say it’s something about you that’s the common factor. And no judgement with that! Maybe the common factor is “I don’t like talking through work with one other person at a scheduled cadence”. Totally fine. I have no specific criticisms about you in your 1x1s.
Then I kinda launched into my own opinions on 1x1s thinking it might help you or someone else. Also just to clarify my thinking by writing, let’s be real.
And based on another comment you left, seems like I was wrong about you disliking them? Then, yeah, don’t worry about it. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Just to state the obvious, the common factor in all your 1x1's have been you.
I have no idea about you, so in very general terms to have them be unreasonably effective there needs to be preparation and input from both sides.
Even if nothing else happens in the 1x1, it is where you can build personal relations as well. That will happen regardless of how prepared anyone is, but it is not always a positive one.
I prefer to build trust through actions rather than meetings. My 1:1s are mostly chit chat or occasionally sensitive topics because I am already keenly aware of what people are working on and what their bottlenecks are.
> I am already keenly aware of what people are working on and what their bottlenecks are.
How? You would need to be on a team that's basically completely nailed safety in order to have an accurate view into that just from group conversations.
I know, and normally the understanding is that it's hard to gather that information unless you speak directly to the people experiencing these bottlenecks in a... 1 on 1 conversation.
> I think some industries, especially software, would do well to have more of a manager/coach model.
I agree. I don't really like admitting failure to my manager. While they're very understanding and easy to work with they're also the person writing my reviews, so there's some tension there.
I think I'd be able to open up more with someone not in my management chain. Maybe even someone who is not in the same business unit as me.
If I knew my boss was going to push me for details, it would just eat up more of my time during the week coming up with some believable horseshit to get me through the meeting. 1:1 meetings work when there is a point to them, like when you're in an environment where you need assistance from your manager to get help or resources from your org.
I disagree. The original commenter obviously does not enjoy 1:1s, and has said they believe the majority of them, even the ones where they have been the manager (!), have been useless. I think that is unusual.
It may very well be that the original commenter should look into changing how they handle and respond to 1:1s. It might help them.
You're quite wrong jcrash. I actually love 1x1s, love getting to know my team, and spend a ton of time developing trust, solving problems, etc in 1x1. At no point have I thought "WOW this is unreasonably effective! Instead I think, "hey here's me doing my job that i love, in a reasonably effective way."
If this is how you feel, then the way you phrased your comment is pretty confusing. You said you strongly disagreed with the author's premise, described the majority of them as "time sucking", and finish off by saying you've never walked away thinking they were unreasonably effective - which, given the tone of the previous statements, reads like an invitation to infer that you often feel the opposite way.
I don't have any sort of dog in this race, but I read and reread your comment, and each time took the impression that you think little of 1x1s. Having read your other comments in the thread, I think I see better that you were disagreeing with the _broadness_ of the author's claim, not the claim itself, but I can understand other commenter's reactions.
Are you sure you have your real stance on them not the reactionary one? The first thing you had to say to describe them originally was they were time sucking status updates and ended with out of 1000s you literally never walked out of a single one thinking it was unreasonably effective. The warmest words were that reviewing process and performance was common. When I look back and think of my most time sucking god awful unproductive meeting series there was a "stand up" (wasn't really) meeting for a couple years at one company and even then I remember walking away from a handful thinking "that was a really super crazy productive meeting".
I mean if it's your well established thoughts then it's definitely your well established thoughts, regardless what anyone else thinks you thought, but I don't think jcash was the only one caught of guard with how/what you were countering the author on.
It's pretty common for manager-types to say one opinion offhandedly and then, when others judge them, to say the opposite opinion and pretend they held the same opinion all along. In this case, the GP realized a little late that being a manager for 10+ years and thinking the majority of your 1:1's are useless is a signal for incompetence. Most competent managers take care not to put their funny business in writing on a public forum.
While it was matter of fact, I do not find it rude or uncalled for. But a call to action that in a one on one it is very much in one’s power to try to steer the format to more productive pastures, and perhaps worth considering if the majority of 1:1s are falling into the unproductive, time-sunk bucket.
I listed three qualities of 1x1s in my post. Quality #2 and #3 I did not deride as time sunk, those are just things that need to be done. Regarding status updates, whether people want to believe it or not, most ICs feel like giving a status update in a 1x1 is time sunk. Managers don't feel that way. However at no point did I say that are unproductive. I just said they aren't "unreasonably effective".
> whether people want to believe it or not, most ICs feel like giving a status update in a 1x1 is time sunk
I can see people believing this for Agile-style standups (I can argue both sides of that one), but something like a scheduled weekly 1:1 should always be valuable sync time for an IC and manager. It also should not be a prison: if you want to skip a week, slack your manager and say "I've nothing, you have anything this week?" or something like that.
edited to add: that said, I too have never had the "unreasonably effective" experience, which is your broader point.
The parent theorized there was no way for a 1:1 to be effective because there are no overlapping common goals and incentives between managers and employees. So then I've presented two common examples of how such goals might exist.
I would be surprised to find that neither of these have ever applied. That would seem to indicate that their entire professional working experience has been only ever adversarial and toxic. Just not a great look, especially if you've also been responsible from the manager side.
Does a situation like this actually exist? Managers succeed when their teams perform well, which is more easily accomplished when the people reporting to them who compose those teams perform well.
Many people who (until recently) perused Reddit's /r/antiwork will tell you that all managers are out to get you and all business hate all of their employees. They will do this with a straight face and accuse you of every kind of evil under the sun if you cite counterexamples.
It is irrelevant to them that there are managers and even Corporations (ew! boo hiss!) that do not, in fact, act that way. They really hate it when anyone points out that treating employees well can result in greater profits, not fewer.
I’ve experienced both types of organizations. In my current workplace, managerial performance evaluation is very much tied to team deliverables. I highly encourage you to keep looking, if this is something you care about.
It's not rude and uncalled for to point out a very valid point.
Your comment on the other hand is completely rude and uncalled for as it gives zero value and the only thing we learn is that 'it hurt your feelings', probably because you too dislike 1:1s
I don't really think it was rude. However reading this and your other comments I can see that the way you are communicating (at least in this HN thread) is quite confusing.
Your main comment could be read in a way that you almost hate 1on1's and find them completely unnecessary. But in another comment you said that it's not true - you actually love them.
Now in here you say "lol" and that it was rude, so which is it? are you laughing at this comment or feeling offended?
I don't think it's necessarily rude to point out something that is obvious, without judging. You are the common factor of the 1-on-1's you took part in. They could suck because of the whole organization, or because of the people that talked with you, but it's also possible it's something related to your character or skillset. I think it's worth looking into this and a reasonable feedback, not a "rude" one.
Like the author, I have had some ongoing 1:1s be incredibly productive. Like really changing my life. Unlike the author, I wouldn’t broadly recommend them. They’re so easy to do in a way that isn’t productive. I think that’s the default, really. So if I was going to tell people to do them I’d be very explicit that you need to do something different than you probably think. Here are exacts steps and characteristics, if you don’t follow these then it won’t work and don’t come to me about it.
The overall general trend of why they’re not effective is they’re too surface level. You say some updates to your boss in a way that doesn’t get you fired, maybe complain about some stuff. You kinda just talk about things.
It needs to be a time when there is some work really happening. It’s metawork, but it’s still work. Like “what were the things that distracted you last week?” and you write them down, there in the meeting. Not “anything distracting you lately?” “nope I’m fine”. It’s a much more vulnerable, interactive process. This is probably why a 1:1 with your boss isn’t the most effective person. Too much image to maintain.
I think the sports model is better. In baseball, the Manager (coach or head coach in other sports) makes decisions about who is playing. Coaches (aka assistant coaches or trainers) are skill experts who help you get better. You can be more vulnerable with them. I think some industries, especially software, would do well to have more of a manager/coach model.