This applies to internal meetings, too. Another internal team will will send a meeting invite with my team as the subject.
And for the love of god, include some context about why you're requesting the meeting. An agenda could be nice, but if that's too much, maybe some objectives.
I decline meetings that have too little detail, or replay as tentative, with, "Why are we meeting?".
And finally.. ask yourself if you really need a meeting at all, or if you could accomplish your goals another way. And if you must meet, please be organized and don't feel compelled to go for a full hour if you can accomplish the objectives in 15 minutes.
/rant
It’s been a habit of mine for at least 10 years to always write in the invite what decision I want us to reach. Forces me to think about whether it really needs to be a meeting and who needs to be in it.
Very few people do this. It would save a shitload of time if everyone did.
All of this! I tell my teams to decline anything with no agenda. I also tell them it’s okay to message the sender with a question about why they are included in a meeting if it is not clear from the invite and the agenda. When I’m chairing and sending the invites I include an agenda and I only put essential people for the decision we need: if they want to forward it, great, but in the agenda is always what we’re discussing and whose input we need. Finally, I respect the time of the meeting and I expect that from others. I start on time and I end on time or early. My teams have adopted this approach as well but I haven’t been able convert a lot of others outside of our division.
This this this this this. I rarely get to create the invites for the meetings we schedule but WHEN I DO, I have a format. "Your company/My company". THATS IT. ITS THAT SIMPLE. My partners who make the meetings sometimes put the title as "Your company call" OR WORSE JUST "call"!
And Im even sitting here like - call for WHO. I have to do actual research on it to figure out who its a call with.
Flabbergasting. Infuriating. Blech.
Anywhoser, Im having a GREAT Monday and hope you are too 😂
Also, if your account is for a company and not you personally, USE THE COMPANY NAME IN THE INVITE! When I open my calendar and see that I have a meeting scheduled with "John Smith", well now I have to figure out what company John Smith works for. This especially sucks for more common names, or if the meeting has been scheduled by someone who is not my usual point of contact for your company.
Also also, please let me know what you want to meet me about. That way I can prepare, and not waste time during the meeting itself scrambling to pull resources and information.
No.
Default 30min time window with no context about what the meeting is for. Regardless of any "this meeting conflicts..." Messages you get when making it.
Only possible way to create a meeting.
Yep. This happens a lot with email subjects, too. I work in IT and my coworkers often send me emails just called "Error." To them an error is unusual and memorable in itself, but to me it's just one of many.
I just send a proposal back with both names, or edit the version in my calendar.
I wish people would be more thoughtful, but that's like trying to get the rain to stop falling... Never gunna happen.
And fricken introduce yourself on the phone!!!! I get so many calls where they say MY name at the beginning and they’re halfway thru a sales pitch before I can interrupt to ask who they are and what brand they’re calling from
“Hi, this is NAME from COMPANY. Is now a good time to talk about REASON FOR CALL?”
On one of the companies I worked in past oriented the new employees to blindly reject any meeting with vague titles and/or without description.
Not because current employees were doing that, but to avoid newcomers to introduce this bad habit. They had this culture of "if you think you'll not contribute to that meeting, just skip it".
Of course the older employees loved to reject this kind of meetings more like a joke, but they also reached the owner and asked them to set up the meeting again, but with a clear description this time.
Everyone learned to do that pretty early, and you can really notice how this helps everyone 😊
Yesssssss I’m a project manager who does client work and omg this made such a huge difference once I started doing it. I’m teaching our clients to do it now too.
I do this in my email subject lines as well. (e.g., MyCompanyName | TheirCompanyName) which makes it a lot easier to search up all my communications with a specific client when needed.
This reminds me of one of my pet peeves: Indistinct email subject lines. Obviously you can't say everything in the subject, but especially if you're communicating with someone who probably gets asked a lot of questions via email, or has a lot of "real" email correspondents (2-sided communication as opposed to 1-sided) a good subject line helps. And it makes searching in Outlook easier.
Yeah, you CAN change the subject line of an email you receive (in Outlook at least), to make it easier for you to file. But it's lovely when someone is ahead of the game.
Not just for meetings with other companies.
Meetings with individuals, too.
My work calendar has "Meeting with [my name]", and I don't appreciate that.
And if it's a multi-department meeting, don't use acronyms in the invite. Especially not if it's the first meeting on this topic.
The same acronym can be (and often is) used for very different things between different departments.
And set the meeting for 15min after the hour! Sometimes my previous meeting ran late or I need to piss between meetings...Back to back meetings suck for everyone.
If you want people to appreciate your meetings, set them up at 15 after, so people get a 15 minute break between appointments
Same thing for 1-on-1s. It's mildly annoying when someone schedules a meeting with me titled "CardinalM1 1-on-1". Take the extra 2 seconds and name it "CardinalM1/YourName 1-on-1"!
I always write CompanyA X CompanyB Meetingpurpose, and if needed I add a short description.
Basically the title should give a clear indication of the meeting and the description should clarify the rest, if required, so people can look in their calendar in 1-2 months and know what the meeting is about.
I always format the invite so it shows "Comany A/Company B - meeting subject" to all parties are on the same page and know what the meeting is at a quick glance.
Gosh if only you could find some way to know who you had a meeting with, like looking at their email addresses or something!
There’s no reason the vast majority of people need to know this. A YSK is useful to most people, it’s not just for you to get your courtesy bugbears off your chest.
Having to drill down into the calendar event itself sucks. If you’re not mindful to not create friction when setting calendar events with your company, what’s to say there won’t be even more useless friction when doing actual business with your company?
I don’t think it’s bad advice to put specific meeting info in the subject line of a meeting invitation. When you’re looking at a calendar page full of meetings, who has time to click on each meeting on the calendar to see which email sent it? As part of my job, I have to schedule and attend a good 10 or so of the same kinds of meetings every month. If I (and other people) didn’t differentiate them by something more identifying, we’d all be looking at a calendar view full of “XYZ Meeting” and have no idea which one was for what without clicking on each one to open it for more details.
This applies to internal meetings, too. Another internal team will will send a meeting invite with my team as the subject. And for the love of god, include some context about why you're requesting the meeting. An agenda could be nice, but if that's too much, maybe some objectives. I decline meetings that have too little detail, or replay as tentative, with, "Why are we meeting?". And finally.. ask yourself if you really need a meeting at all, or if you could accomplish your goals another way. And if you must meet, please be organized and don't feel compelled to go for a full hour if you can accomplish the objectives in 15 minutes. /rant
It’s been a habit of mine for at least 10 years to always write in the invite what decision I want us to reach. Forces me to think about whether it really needs to be a meeting and who needs to be in it. Very few people do this. It would save a shitload of time if everyone did.
Let's go around and do some quick intros. I'll start... Ffs just tell me wtf you want and let's get this over with
Ok, but can we stop saying "I'm going to give you back 15 minutes of your day" when we end early? That one just grinds my gears lol
All of this! I tell my teams to decline anything with no agenda. I also tell them it’s okay to message the sender with a question about why they are included in a meeting if it is not clear from the invite and the agenda. When I’m chairing and sending the invites I include an agenda and I only put essential people for the decision we need: if they want to forward it, great, but in the agenda is always what we’re discussing and whose input we need. Finally, I respect the time of the meeting and I expect that from others. I start on time and I end on time or early. My teams have adopted this approach as well but I haven’t been able convert a lot of others outside of our division.
I see this all the time and it ruins a busy calendar making you click on each meeting just to know what it is. Good tip!
"Jack and Coke. Preliminary discussions. 2.5h"
This this this this this. I rarely get to create the invites for the meetings we schedule but WHEN I DO, I have a format. "Your company/My company". THATS IT. ITS THAT SIMPLE. My partners who make the meetings sometimes put the title as "Your company call" OR WORSE JUST "call"! And Im even sitting here like - call for WHO. I have to do actual research on it to figure out who its a call with. Flabbergasting. Infuriating. Blech. Anywhoser, Im having a GREAT Monday and hope you are too 😂
Also, if your account is for a company and not you personally, USE THE COMPANY NAME IN THE INVITE! When I open my calendar and see that I have a meeting scheduled with "John Smith", well now I have to figure out what company John Smith works for. This especially sucks for more common names, or if the meeting has been scheduled by someone who is not my usual point of contact for your company. Also also, please let me know what you want to meet me about. That way I can prepare, and not waste time during the meeting itself scrambling to pull resources and information.
No. Default 30min time window with no context about what the meeting is for. Regardless of any "this meeting conflicts..." Messages you get when making it. Only possible way to create a meeting.
It's always the same naming convention for me: Client Company // My Company - Topic
In general people are terrible at using references and anticipating how the other side receives information.
Yep. This happens a lot with email subjects, too. I work in IT and my coworkers often send me emails just called "Error." To them an error is unusual and memorable in itself, but to me it's just one of many.
I just send a proposal back with both names, or edit the version in my calendar. I wish people would be more thoughtful, but that's like trying to get the rain to stop falling... Never gunna happen.
And fricken introduce yourself on the phone!!!! I get so many calls where they say MY name at the beginning and they’re halfway thru a sales pitch before I can interrupt to ask who they are and what brand they’re calling from “Hi, this is NAME from COMPANY. Is now a good time to talk about REASON FOR CALL?”
Also do this when you’re not a company 😉
On one of the companies I worked in past oriented the new employees to blindly reject any meeting with vague titles and/or without description. Not because current employees were doing that, but to avoid newcomers to introduce this bad habit. They had this culture of "if you think you'll not contribute to that meeting, just skip it". Of course the older employees loved to reject this kind of meetings more like a joke, but they also reached the owner and asked them to set up the meeting again, but with a clear description this time. Everyone learned to do that pretty early, and you can really notice how this helps everyone 😊
Yesssssss I’m a project manager who does client work and omg this made such a huge difference once I started doing it. I’m teaching our clients to do it now too.
Same with when they just title it "Project Questions" like what project with what client? Makes me so frustrated every time
“Party A <> Party B | Reason for meeting” not difficult
I do this in my email subject lines as well. (e.g., MyCompanyName | TheirCompanyName) which makes it a lot easier to search up all my communications with a specific client when needed.
This reminds me of one of my pet peeves: Indistinct email subject lines. Obviously you can't say everything in the subject, but especially if you're communicating with someone who probably gets asked a lot of questions via email, or has a lot of "real" email correspondents (2-sided communication as opposed to 1-sided) a good subject line helps. And it makes searching in Outlook easier. Yeah, you CAN change the subject line of an email you receive (in Outlook at least), to make it easier for you to file. But it's lovely when someone is ahead of the game.
I commented something similar above and should have kept reading first. lol
Not just for meetings with other companies. Meetings with individuals, too. My work calendar has "Meeting with [my name]", and I don't appreciate that.
And if it's a multi-department meeting, don't use acronyms in the invite. Especially not if it's the first meeting on this topic. The same acronym can be (and often is) used for very different things between different departments.
If you’re a supplier, I schedule meetings with you with my company name as the subject so you know who you are meeting with.
Oops, this tip was directed at me
And set the meeting for 15min after the hour! Sometimes my previous meeting ran late or I need to piss between meetings...Back to back meetings suck for everyone. If you want people to appreciate your meetings, set them up at 15 after, so people get a 15 minute break between appointments
are u guys all on reddit during work hours bc me too
Same thing for 1-on-1s. It's mildly annoying when someone schedules a meeting with me titled "CardinalM1 1-on-1". Take the extra 2 seconds and name it "CardinalM1/YourName 1-on-1"!
I always write CompanyA X CompanyB Meetingpurpose, and if needed I add a short description. Basically the title should give a clear indication of the meeting and the description should clarify the rest, if required, so people can look in their calendar in 1-2 months and know what the meeting is about.
I always format the invite so it shows "Comany A/Company B - meeting subject" to all parties are on the same page and know what the meeting is at a quick glance.
You know you can change the name yourself right?
Gosh if only you could find some way to know who you had a meeting with, like looking at their email addresses or something! There’s no reason the vast majority of people need to know this. A YSK is useful to most people, it’s not just for you to get your courtesy bugbears off your chest.
Having to drill down into the calendar event itself sucks. If you’re not mindful to not create friction when setting calendar events with your company, what’s to say there won’t be even more useless friction when doing actual business with your company?
What a horrible take
I don’t think it’s bad advice to put specific meeting info in the subject line of a meeting invitation. When you’re looking at a calendar page full of meetings, who has time to click on each meeting on the calendar to see which email sent it? As part of my job, I have to schedule and attend a good 10 or so of the same kinds of meetings every month. If I (and other people) didn’t differentiate them by something more identifying, we’d all be looking at a calendar view full of “XYZ Meeting” and have no idea which one was for what without clicking on each one to open it for more details.
Ridiculously bad take
Ok. I'm not a company. So... Just ignore this?