All companies have their own way of going about meetings.

In some cases, businesses have the employees in their different departments meet on a regular basis in order to make sure everything is in order, people are handling their individual responsibilities, and any and all questions can be asked and hopefully answered.

In other instances, companies will rarely bring their employees together to meet, leaving lots of unanswered questions, and an atmosphere of uncertainty.

So, which road should your business take to best position itself for success?

In looking at the pros and cons of meetings, consider these two factors:

• Meetings should serve a purpose – If your various departments are getting a lot out of the meetings, there should be no reason to do away with them.
• Time is of the essence – If your employees feel like the time devoted to meetings could be better spent elsewhere, are you listening to them?

Here are two examples of companies and why there needs to be an understanding and system in place regarding meetings.

Company A – At this company, meetings are few and far between. The different departments essentially have no idea what each other is doing; hence there is little or no communication. When questions do arise as to who is working on what, there are oftentimes no responses and looks of utter confusion on the faces of employees. The bottom line is the workload is suffering and clients are taking notice of the lack of cohesion within the business.

Company B – At this company, meetings happen around the clock. Every time you turn around either you or another co-worker is being called into a meeting; hence it seems like there is less and less time to get the work done. The bottom line is the workload is suffering and clients are taking notice of backed up schedules.

As you can see in these two examples – there was one common theme – the workload being impacted.

One of the most important goals of any business is to meet its scheduled timelines. If the company’s products and/or services are often being delayed in reaching the client, what is to stop the customer from going elsewhere?

I have worked in both situations in 23 years as an employee with a handful of businesses.

I have seen employees that had no idea what the other one was doing because there was little or no communication going on, meaning meetings were about as rare as a Buffalo heat wave in January.

On the flip side, I have seen employees that were meeting constantly, then wondering why their work was stacked high to the ceiling. Perhaps instead of having so many meetings during the day, the head or heads of the company could have put that time to better use, say letting their employees do what they were hired to do in the first place — work.

Most people would probably agree  that you need to find something in the middle of the road. Yes, your employees should meet from time to time, but not every other hour to the point of where they burn holes in the conference room rug.

At the end of the day, those that run the company should set the tone for how often their various departments meet during the work week.

If they’re smart, they will take input from the employees themselves to determine whether they are meeting just to meet.

In your work experiences, have you found meetings to be beneficial, just a part of the job, or a lot of hot air that ended up cutting into valuable work time?

Photo credit: tbip.net

Text Playlist

Frank Chimero, a designer and author in Portland, Oregon, keeps a collection of articles that inspire him to make things.

I keep what I perceive to be a more valuable, important morgue file: one made of the best writing on the web I come across. I take this list and revisit and reread it every 4 to 8 weeks. You could almost consider it a playlist of text. Most revolve around what it’s like to be making things in 2010. It’s almost a pep talk in text form. I visit it when I’m down, when I’m lazy, when I’m feeling the inertia take over.

Text Playlist – Frank Chimero

It’s a beautiful idea.

Maybe you can make one of your own and share it?

Text Playlist – Frank Chimero

How to Get Started as an Entrepreneur

This is a selection of articles that I keep at hand for when I need a nudge to get started with a project or to help me get started building something to see what it can turn into.

If you don’t have time to read these articles, you should register a free account on Instapaper – a simple tool to save web pages for reading later – and save these articles to read later.

The Top Idea in Your Mind – Paul Graham

Paul Graham is the founder of YCombinator, a startup incubator in California. If you’ve used Reddit, Dropbox, Scribd, Posterous, or Justin.tv, you’ve used a company that YCombinator has helped create.

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That’s the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

The Top Idea in Your Mind – Paul Graham

The Top Idea in Your Mind makes me think about what I’m focusing my thoughts on. What’s the top idea in my mind? Is that the wrong idea to be focusing on?

I suspect a lot of people aren’t sure what’s the top idea in their mind at any given time. I’m often mistaken about it. I tend to think it’s the idea I’d want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. But it’s easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it’s not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something.

The Top Idea in Your Mind – Paul Graham

First, Care – Merlin Mann

Anonymous asked: ‘How do you maintain focus (on work, dreams, goals, life)?’

You do one thing at a time.

Merlin Mann, an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster in San Francisco, talks about maintaining focus on work, dreams, life, and goals, in a hectic life. The Top Idea in Your Mind makes me think about what idea is at the top of my mind. First, Care, makes me ask if I really care about that idea.

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it.

First, Care – Merlin Mann

If I have an idea at the top of my mind, but I haven’t been able to get started on it, I need to consider if I don’t really care about that idea. I need to consider if I should be focusing my thoughts on something else that I can care about.

How to Make Wealth – Paul Graham

How to Make Wealth reminds me that the way to make wealth is to do something people want. It’s that simple.

The advantage of creating wealth, as a way to get rich, is not just that it’s more legitimate (many of the other methods are now illegal) but that it’s more straightforward. You just have to do something people want.

How to Make Wealth – Paul Graham

How to Hire a Programmer – Derek Sivers

My ideas center around making things online, but I’m not a programmer. How to Hire a Programmer reminds me that it’s good to ask for help. There are talented people with skills outside of my area of expertise who want to help turn my idea into reality. It’s good to ask for help.

Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Many of my friends have been in the same position, so here’s my best advice.

How to Hire a Programmer – Derek Sivers

Better – Merlin Mann

Frank says it perfectly.

I read Merlin’s essay when I’m sad and tired, fed up and cynical. Nothing makes me more angry than the internet some times (sorry, but true) and reading this reminds me that just because a lot of others are making shallow, husk-content, that doesn’t mean we have to.
Text Playlist – Frank Chimero

Better is what I read when I need to be reminded that anything short of better than my previous best isn’t good enough.

All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.

Better – Merlin Mann

100 Rules for Entrepreneurs – James Altucher

100 Rules for Entrepreneurs brings me down to earth. It reminds me that being an entrepreneur is hard work. Bringing something new into the world takes love, time, attention, and pain.

It’s not fun. I’m not going to explain why it’s not fun. These are rules. Not theories. I don’t need to prove them. But there’s a strong chance you can hate yourself throughout the process of being an entrepreneur. Keep sharp objects and pills away during your worst moments. And you will have them. If you are an entrepreneur and agree with me, please note this in the comments below.

100 Rules for Entrepreneurs – James Altucher

“Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to be like a job,” says Paul Graham, programming language designer, author, and venture firm partner. “It explains why people [in startups] are surprised…and why the surprises are so extreme.”

Graham’s recent post, What Startups Are Really Like, talks about the surprises in startups. He sent an email to all the business founders who had been funded by his venture firm Y Combinator, asking what things had surprised them in their startup.

Over 100 responded and their lists were summarized into frequently recurring patterns, including:

2. Startups take over your life — “I didn’t realize I would spend almost every waking moment either working or thinking about our startup.”
4. It can be fun — “The best way to put it might be that starting a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun…”
6. Think long-term — “For the vast majority of startups that become successful, it’s going to be a really long journey, at least 3 years and probably 5+.”
12. It’s hard to get users — “I had no idea how much time and effort needed to go into attaining users. ”
13. Expect the worst with deals — “Deals fall through. That’s a constant of the startup world.”
19. Things change as you grow — “Your job description … is completely rewritten every 6-12 months.”

Says Graham, “These are supposed to be the surprises, the things I didn’t tell people. What do they all have in common? They’re all things I do tell people.”

The answer to the puzzle is that our prior experience in business is our jobs — working for someone else. Being a founder of a startup is orders of magnitude beyond our experience and ability to imagine. Despite our preparation, we can’t believe it is as intense as others tell us, hence we are surprised.

So, go to Paul Graham’s site and read this essay, What Startups Are Really Like, and think about what surprised these other founders. Print it out, and stick it up near your desk where you can re-read it often. Take the advice to heart.

My thanks to my co-editor Sara Prentice Manela for sending this essay my way.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software