Module 4 · Lesson 4.3a · Team leaders
Meetings as a signal, for team leaders
What a heavy meeting load says about the definitions your team is missing.
Key idea
A meeting that negotiates the same meaning every time is often standing in for a definition nobody wrote down. Agree it once, and the meeting shrinks.
In this lesson
- The daily go-live call
- What the meeting load was telling them
- When the meetings are right
- Reading your own team’s calendar
The daily go-live call
Harbourline · Service Transition, Kraków and Pune
Before Harbourline agreed “Run-book ready for go-live”, Service Transition ran a daily call in the two weeks before every new client service went live. Fiona Grant’s team, the Kraków integration engineers and the Pune Service Desk all joined.
Every day, the same questions came up. Has the Service Desk seen the run-book? Does it cover the calls they’ll get? Who do they ring if the integration fails? Is it ready? The answers changed depending on who was on the call and how confident they felt that morning.
The call wasn’t wasted, exactly. It was the only place the three teams worked out, in real time, what “ready” meant for that service. But it had to happen again, from scratch, for every go-live.
What the meeting load was telling them
A heavy meeting load is a useful signal. It doesn’t necessarily mean low maturity or poor teamwork. Often it means there is an interface where the investment hasn’t been made yet: real-time negotiation standing in for an agreement that was never written down.
The daily go-live call was exactly that. It existed because “ready” had never been defined. Once the run-book definition was agreed, the call was no longer needed for most go-lives. A run-book either meets the definition or it doesn’t, and the Service Desk’s sign-off says which.
Try it
The go-live call, before and after
Switch between the two and compare.
| The meeting | A daily call for two weeks before every go-live, with Service Transition, Kraków and Pune. |
|---|---|
| “Is it ready?” | Answered differently depending on who was on the call and how confident they felt that morning. |
| Effort | Worked out again, from scratch, for every go-live. |
When the meetings are right
Not every recurring meeting is a missing definition. Some meetings are simply the proportionate way to handle something.
If an interface is important and recurring, the fix is usually to invest once in getting it specific, and the meetings shrink. If it isn’t, because it comes up rarely, or each case is genuinely different, the meeting may be the right tool. Formalising something that comes up twice a year would cost more than it saves.
Meetings also remain the right place for the densest part of the work: negotiating a definition in the first place, and renegotiating it when circumstances change.
Reading your own team’s calendar
Look at the recurring meetings your team holds or attends, and ask four questions of each one.
Try it
Is this meeting standing in for a definition?
Pick one recurring meeting your team holds or attends, and answer each question.
1. Do the same questions come up every time?
2. Is the meeting really agreeing what a word means, such as “ready”, “done” or “urgent”, over and over again?
3. Does the answer depend on who happens to attend?
4. Is the interface behind it important and recurring?
Pause and think · your notes
Look at one recurring meeting in your team’s calendar.
How Alex would answer
If the meeting keeps agreeing the same word, the definition is the fix and the meeting shrinks. If it handles genuinely different cases each time, it may be the right tool.
What to take away
- A heavy meeting load is a signal, not a verdict on the team.
- Meetings that renegotiate the same word are standing in for a definition.
- Keep meetings for what they do best: negotiating and renegotiating definitions, and genuinely different cases.
Your progress
Course contents · This is the open version of the course. Your notes, progress and check scores are saved on this device, and in your account when you are signed in.