I used to hate meetings. Like, more than anything about my job. Nothing but time wasted in my day in which I could/should be developing. And I felt this way for years. I didn’t realize when I was Developer Team Lead of projects that meetings were important. My teams were never that big and I guess I made my strategy all alone and told people to ‘do it’. That, or I left my responsibility to others. Delegation and all that.

It’s taken 6+ years to realize…frig, meetings are important. Sure, it’s less important to the executor, who just has to do what they’re being told. Mindless drones, we are (or that’s how we’re perceived). And there’s a lot of time to think when you’re developing – think of ways this could be done better, ways to complain. But on the flip side – I realize now that the project managers have it really tough. Sending people on frivolous tasks is detrimental in more ways than one. Not only is it a waste of time, but the executor will know it’s a waste of time. And then they start to question leadership. No, direction has to be carefully thought out. Strategy has to be carefully planned out.

Leadership is hard (and I’m not talking about my role). Leading anyone to do anything can be hard. And you’re only as successful as the people working with you, as well as yourself. A bad leader with an exceptional team will…well, I was gonna say fail but they’ll actually succeed. Just at the cost of the exceptional team (story of my life for 3+ years). A great leader and a bad team…I’m not sure what kinda results those will produce to be honest. But to have really great results, you gotta have a good leader and a good team. Or better yet, a great, or excellent, or outstanding leader/team for even better results. Oops – kinda went on a tangent there.

I just wanted to say…it’s taken me 7+ years and I realize the importance of meetings now. In my current role, I’m trying to have meetings all the time to learn and to grow. I often wonder, does my team think “WTF IS WITH ALL WARREN’S MEETINGS?!?!” as I would have definitely thought, 1+ years ago. Inexperienced Warren would be saying “it’s no wonder Warren has all these meetings, he doesn’t do anything anymore so he just fills his time with dumb meetings – and drags us along”. I do do stuff still (how dare you! :@).

It’s critical to plan appropriately. I’m very good with organization and planning (when I want to be) and I find that skill coming in handy more so now than ever. “Planning and organizing”, in the workplace, should better be defined as “Strategy”. Hm, maybe I’ll change that on my resume. “Exceptional planning and organizing of team resources;Great strategist and leader” or something like that.

Meetings are the first step to executing strategy. They’re critical. Have them often. Don’t have them if not necessary but book time for them (in case).