Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

&gt; Weekly status updates? Project kick-offs? Quarterly and monthly planning? Retrospectives? All are carried out asynchronously, in the form of structured write-ups in Nuclino.<p>Another criticism of a controversial tech that is actually a pitch for a product. It&#x27;s a Hacker News staple.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m just getting too cynical.

The meeting I find the biggest time waster is the &quot;what I did yesterday, what am I doing today&quot; meetings. Nothing better than sitting on a 45 minutes call while 15 people try to justify their existence to the pm on the fly.<p>I find a slack channel called #status-updates works wonders. It persists, it&#x27;s much faster to consume, it&#x27;s searchable, and you don&#x27;t have to read it if you don&#x27;t need to.

Some workflows require synchronous communications. Meetings, in person or virtual, are great for these.<p>Other workflows work asynchronously. E-mail, IM and the like are great for these.<p>Post-War America erred on the side of meetings, forcing asynchronous flows into artificial bottlenecks. Silicon Valley seems to have over-corrected, replacing ten-minute meetings with full-day Slack threads.<p>Trying to force asynchronous flows into synchronous constructs introduces unnecessary delays, as the slowest process sets the pace. It also increases overhead, since resource C is occupied while A and B sync. Trying to force synchronous flows into asynchronous constructs introduces mistakes through mis-communications. It also increases overhead, since an additional layer of verifying everyone got critical information is introduced.

If your company is well managed then pretty much anything can work. Meetings can be short and to the point. Memos&#x2F;emails can also be short and to the point. When everyone understands what the ultimate goals are and are allowed to work towards those goals communication is minimal.<p>Typically, though, goals are unclear and constantly shifting. From that flows multiple tasks that are all high priority up to the point they suddenly become irrelevant. In such an environment communication needs to be continuous. Continuous communication is by necessity synchronous.

It seems to me that you have found two problems.

How do we make our company look like an alternative to zoom when people look for that? I know, bash meetings and say that using another nondescript wiki&#x2F;document tool is the right move. You waste so much more time having to write in a document and then going back to look at what other people have written as they do than just having a quick meeting. meetings are running long because people like social interaction and we are missing it.

i think zoom is also the problem

I agree that video calls are great when used to create human connections and to vigorously debate - but little else. I&#x27;ve survived my share of Zoom meetings that should have been emails but it got WAY worse since the lockdown.

Discord (or simply voice channels) to the rescue. You can make quick p2p alignments and prevent a lot of meetings. Assuming that using sync communication is necessary :)

I wouldn’t want to give up the morning scrum IMO, especially when isolated like this.

Two things can be true.

Bad meetings are a problem.<p>Zoom&#x27;s technical details are a problem too.

content marketing at its best.

It’s a shame because Zoom has good fundamental tech.