Generally speaking I quite like the 37 Signals stuff, but in reading the Meetings Are Toxic chapter of their new book Getting Real, I have to disagree. From the book:

Do you really need meetings? Meetings usually arise when a concept isn’t clear enough. Instead of resorting to a meeting, try to simplify the concept so you can discuss it via email or IM or Campfire. The goal is to avoid meetings.

When we had a 10 person startup, this was sage advice. Everybody knew each other, trusted each other, was going in the same direction. Meetings were a rare and unusal event.

When you’re in a project with hundreds of people, communication is absolutely the bottleneck. In fact the Ganssel Group quote later in the chapter addresses this.

So how do you get people to communicate?

The book has some good advice – break the project into small autonomous teams with clear direction. Reduce the need for communication. Excellent.

But what do you do when autonomous team A fundamentally disagrees with autonomous team B on some aspect of the project that spans their functions? Throw in the fact that A is convinced B are a bunch of staid, lazy morons with no idea what’s best for the company, while B has evidence that A are a gaggle of arrogant kids with no experience in this business.

Do we, as suggested by the book, simplify and discuss by IM or email?

There’s nothing more toxic than a nasty long thread of email on a contentious issue that will not by any practical stretch be solved via email.

So what do you do?

Meet. Meet in person.

We are, after all, humans. Years of evolution (or perhaps intelligent design? ) have equipped us to understand other humans by visual and physical cues to a degree hard to achieve via the written word. Impossible to achieve via a hastily written email or IM.

In fact, a recent study has been in the press for showing that our ability to ascertain the intent of an email is equal to chance. We don’t have any idea what the emotional intent of the sender was.

So, meet. Use email and IM to deal with normal communication. If a contentious issue appears, get up, right now, off your chair, gather up the minimum set of necessary people, especially the lazy morons from group B, and talk it over. You’ll be well on your way to solving the issue, if it is solvable within your means.

Instead of calling meetings toxic, have better meetings. Get together, talk it over, draw it up on the whiteboard, and move on. A meeting doesn’t have to be a slice of hell with people droning on forever. Quiet those people up or don’t invite them. Discuss the actual issues. Use it as a working session.

Take it a step further. Buy that ignorant fool from the other team lunch. It’s easy to hate that guy from IM or email. It’s easy to dislike that guy from the meeting. Then you go to lunch, talk about life, realize he has a dog, and conclude he can’t be all bad. He does have a dog after all.