Is community unintentionally killing our community? I’ve been feeling overloaded by the volume of meet-ups, slack groups, check-ins, and share-outs that are filling up my calendar. I want to be here for friends, colleagues and industry peers, but there’s often not enough time left to do the work. I believe that a disproportionate amount of this activity is fuzz on the signal that presents as an easily activated door that once opened, diverges time and energy from the very work that actually provides the salve. Like, WORK work (as opposed to talking and sharing). Research. Quick, deep thinking. Sharp writing. And the hardest part of all, taking action and putting ourselves out there to clients, prospects, and the market. Every 30 min window spent talking about how hard it is, is 30 minutes not making it easier. At Siberia we’ve been incrementally pushing ourselves on this for the last few years. Killing weeklies and standing 1v1s. Iterating on status mechanisms and formats. Most recently, nuking annual reviews (my absolute favorite). Its not for everyone and I’m sure we’ll eventually find that we’ve gone too far, but its an interesting experiment. I don’t know who they are, and I suspect they don’t spend much time on LinkedIn, but tip of the hat to the brutal essentialists and heroes of focus. OK thats it. I need to get to a SoDA: The Digital Society CMO roundtable…
Robin Bonn
6mo
Good issues raised, Chris - it takes me to a place of which activities give me energy, vs those that deplete it. Likewise, what do I mean when I say 'I'm tired'? - turns out it's way more nuanced than a binary tired vs not tired. If you've not seen Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's work on rest, check it out.
Karl Isaac
6mo
hi Chris Mele. I always love your take on things. Mine is a bit different in this case. Maybe I'm biased because I've just launched a monthly meetup (you should come sometime and share your view btw!). I believe there's a hunger for more human connection these days. And for many that work at home, perhaps on their own, it's really powerful and healthy to get together. Even structured 1:1s with colleagues can be so valuable in terms of facilitating tough conversations with kindness and care, that without prescheduled time could be taken out of proportion as a one-off meeting. I'd even argue that fostering human connection is the work. There are definitely things that get in way of our productivity, yet hoping we find an equally powerful measures of success that complements what we do with how we do it, together. BTW, all for getting rid of annual reviews. At Adobe we did check-ins and left it to each manager to determine when and how, with great success.
Kristian Kruse
6mo
You might like to read this: https://mailchi.mp/d2ac53ab0a27/2023-residents-5561958
Kara Place
6mo
I agree and also...want to catch up? 💁♀️
Liya Safina
6mo
Agreed! Recording async Looms has saved me MANY hours of standups and meetings.
Tom Beck
6mo
Well done, Chris! This is a tricky one. I agree, in principle, with your assessment. Who among us isn't routinely over-scheduled, over-committed, over-stimulated, and distracted? Many of the mechanisms you cite contribute to the problem. In some cases, they are the problem. Autonomy and white space fuel creativity and productivity. We can kill both with too much communication, connection, and collaboration. The challenge with your framing is one of nomenclature and individual wiring. The term "community" contains a meaning that, for me, is different than what you might hope to accomplish in 1:1's, status meetings, check-ins, and all the various mechanisms we use to "touch base" and bring teams together. Terms like "communication" "management" and "collaboration" seem more appropriate to me in this context. Too much is the enemy of creativity and productivity. Our friend, Jack Skeels, writes about this... especially the problem with over-managing. (End of Part 1. That's how much focus I lack. I need two parts to collect my thoughts on this).
spit it out! whatcha want? My partner's medical training required very succinct handoffs between accountable parties in shift work, and I often wonder how much more effective people would be if they were getting pointy feedback in their formative years about wasting time... you can be kind without being nice at the expense of achieving. and a meeting is at a minimum twice the people cost of solo work. i LOVE collaborative work, and believe it takes discipline and pre-work to make collaborative work hum. so, set it up and perform at peak... or slog along holding time hostage and wearing people out with mediocrity.