Note
We have this thing at Google called "learning on the loo". Posts put up in bathrooms all over the company. Seriously. Anyway, I got one published on September 23, 2024.
Greta Googler has been trying to find a resolution on a design decision for weeks. Tessa Techlead doesn't understand the importance of the change and isn’t giving actionable feedback. Otto Othertimezone only replies to the thread once a day, so the discussion is moving slowly. Maybe Greta should get everyone into a meeting so they can quickly align, make a decision, and move forward.
This meeting could have been an email
It's a common refrain. Time is valuable. Every minute in a meeting is a minute other work is not getting done. Avoid scheduling meetings when an email (or perhaps a chat) would do the trick. But what about the opposite? Are there times when a thread in email, a bug tracker, or a document comment should become a meeting?
How to tell whether this thread should become a meeting
While there are no hard-and-fast rules, there are some indications that getting thread participants into a real-time discussion could be helpful: either (1) the conversation is slow or stalled or (2) it's headed in a bad direction.
| Indication | Description |
|---|---|
| Slow or stalled | If the participants in a discussion don't have overlapping work hours (due to work preferences, life circumstances, or time zones), quickly and effectively converging in a discussion can be unnecessarily drawn out. |
| Confusion | Complexity and nuance can easily creep into any conversation. If multiple topics are introduced into a thread, it can be difficult to determine everyone's level of understanding and investment, let alone agreement. |
| Escalating emotions | Meaning and intent can easily be misinterpreted in text. Add in differences in communication style and culture, mixed with differing priorities or agendas, to a thread that's been going on for days or weeks without resolution and you have the perfect environment for annoyance, hurt feelings, and frustration. |
How to do this without making everyone hate you
If you do decide to pull the ripcord and schedule a meeting to unblock a thread, you owe it to your participants to keep it lean and focused. Follow these four rules of engagement:
- Default to 15 minutes: Don't book the default 30 or 60 minutes. A 15-minute micro-sync creates focus and urgency. If it's just a definitive call between two options, you don't need half an hour.
- Define the exact goal in the invite: The invite shouldn't just say "Discuss Greta's design". State the specific decision required: "Goal: Decide between Option A (caching) and Option B (re-fetching) on page 3 of the doc."
- Keep the blast radius small: Only invite the key decision-makers and blockers (Greta, Tessa, Otto). Don't invite the entire 12-person engineering team just to 'observe'.
- Close the loop in writing: The moment a decision is made on the call, document it back into the original email thread, bug tracker, or design doc so everyone else knows the issue is officially resolved.