Remember the horror story from last week about an accessibility meeting gone horribly wrong?
Let's dissect it a little bit and see why it failed.
I've read and re-read that email myself and I recognised so many patterns. Meetings that were destined to be doomed before they even started. Meetings that completely fell apart half way through. And meetings that took a turn for the worst just when my hopes were up.
Here are some of the problems I've identified in that story:
- It had no agenda or a vague agenda that gave no real direction.
- It started late and ran over.
- There were too many people on the call who didn't need to be there but were invited "just in case."
- People showed up without having reviewed materials.
- The same topics got repeated. Again. And again. And AGAIN.
- Too much small talk and not enough action.
- The loudest voices dominated while the real experts were silent.
- People zoned out.
- You had that one manager who loved the sound of their own voice.
- It seemed to be "monitoring progress" without allocating time to actually make progress.
- It was about issues and not about preventing them.
- Too technical for some attendees, too basic for others.
- It had no clear decision-maker, so discussions went on in circles without resolution.
- Someone brought up "just one more thing" as the meeting wass supposed to end.
- No assigned action items or owners by the end - just vague "we should look into this."
- The meeting could have been an email or a simple document.
Looking back, there were a few things the story missed, things that are way to real to leave out:
- Technical problems eating up the first few minutes ("Can you hear me now?")
- Someone hijacking the meeting to discuss their pet project that's completely unrelated.
- Accessibility being treated as a checkbox rather than a genuine priority.
- No follow-up from previous meetings' action items.
- Having the meeting at an inconvenient time (like 4:30 PM on Friday).
- Discussing things that only affect 1-2 people while everyone else waits.
- Meetings where the only tangible result is the decision to meet again.
That. Is. A. Lot.
Should we just swear off meetings altogether?
No, I don't think that's a solution. Accessibility is a complicated-enough subject. We don't need to make it more so by only collaborating asynchronously.
I hope to come up with some hard and fast rules to avoid BS meetings. I might turn it into a checklist at the end.
Stick around.