Taking the example from the OP, do you really think it would be better to slowly come to agreement over 12 meetings or to have some more senior person say a few words to skip the ego soothing or whatever in those meetings? Your second two paragraphs seem to imply that you think the former is better. Do you think that (and why)?
My best guesses are that I’m misunderstanding what you wrote, you’re thinking of a different example, or you’re imagining some hidden cost to the actions taken to ‘get it done’.
In my opinion the latter choice seems obviously better, both for the company that gets more productive employees, and for the people who would have been in those meetings because I think sitting in pointless meetings and having some task on the back burner for ages as you go through the meetings is not pleasant. Perhaps there’s some world where you’re expected to sit in the office for exactly N hours per day and so pointless meetings are a way to work fewer hours. But imo even if the choice is an hour of tedious meeting vs an hour of working, the work feels preferable to me.
> I think sitting in pointless meetings and having some task on the back burner for ages as you go through the meetings is not pleasant
What seems pointless to you is not pointless to the team you manage. What's important to you is often not seen that way by your team either. This is a really straightforward dysfunction to fix and it's always the manager's responsibility to do it.
> have some more senior person say a few words to skip the ego soothing
The best managers don't have this attitude. You're absolutely right that someone in charge of the project needs to moderate the meetings, but I'm curious if the "few words" are really constructive suggestions based on experience that speed up decision making, or just dumb whip cracking. If it's the latter, I wouldn't keep you on. If the team just needed to be reminded of deadlines, we would replace all managers with a clock on the wall.
I’m trying to describe the premise from the article rather than speaking generally, to better understand the opinion of the commenter whom I’m replying to. For the purposes of the question, I want to assume that the OP accurately describes the situation as one in which those meetings would be unnecessary. I perhaps did a poor job of representing that.
> Taking the example from the OP, do you really think it would be better to slowly come to agreement over 12 meetings or to have some more senior person say a few words to skip the ego soothing or whatever in those meetings?
I don’t understand what you mean. Did I do a bad job of representing the scenario in the original article? Those were the outcomes from the article as I understood it, where one is caused by ‘try to do it by yourself’ and the other by ‘get help’.
Sure, but I’m not asking about a situation where the choice is between right and fast. The choice I’m intermediated in is the one between ‘right and fast’ and ‘right and slow’. I wish that you would clearly write down what your actual opinion is instead of riddles. My actual opinion is that ‘right and fast’ is obviously better than ‘right and slow’ (with other things like hours worked kept equal). It seemed to me that the GP’s comment was implying something close to the opposite and I was curious for more details.
My best guesses are that I’m misunderstanding what you wrote, you’re thinking of a different example, or you’re imagining some hidden cost to the actions taken to ‘get it done’.
In my opinion the latter choice seems obviously better, both for the company that gets more productive employees, and for the people who would have been in those meetings because I think sitting in pointless meetings and having some task on the back burner for ages as you go through the meetings is not pleasant. Perhaps there’s some world where you’re expected to sit in the office for exactly N hours per day and so pointless meetings are a way to work fewer hours. But imo even if the choice is an hour of tedious meeting vs an hour of working, the work feels preferable to me.