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Meeting Fatigue vs. Making Human Connections

Don't kill your stand-up, but hold it less often and change the agenda.

March 30th, 2023

by Henry Poydar

in Teamwork

Every once in a while, I’ll hear the assumption that using Status Hero for async check-ins will come at the cost of the “human connection” that a stand-up meeting provides.

Human connections and collaborative meetings at work, are of course, vital. But a status meeting where everyone goes around the room reading off work tickets won’t get you there. In fact, just the opposite.

Deep down, people generally don’t hate meetings. What they resent is having their time wasted, especially if it’s plopped into the middle of a stretch that they could otherwise use for deep work. You know, the stuff they’re on the hook to deliver.

Stand-ups are a classic example of “this meeting could be an email” (or a wonderfully formatted dashboard provided by Status Hero 😉.) Your team knows this, and the resentment will fester when you try and Zoom/gather everyone daily for “stand up.”

So how do you solve for both async check-ins and live interpersonal interaction? First, ditch the stand-up and go async for daily stand-up stuff: intentions, accomplishments, and blockers. Then, keep a recurring team meeting on the books, but do it less frequently and loosen up the agenda.

Here’s how we do it and it’s my recommended approach to you: our 7-person all-remote team holds a weekly team meeting to review objectives, wins, concerns, and new ideas. It has a cooperative feel and connects us personally. Our Status Hero dashboard does the rest for daily context, work ticket updates (we use Linear), and the long-term goals that drive small decisions.

A screenshot of a Status Hero check-in dashboard

👆 Our dashboard today, awesome special sauce redacted

Bonus: you get to be the hero (heh) that traded five boring meetings a week for a single useful one.

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