Meetings versus work sessions or ceremonies

While it may seem like semantics, all three concepts, while technically meetings, are distinct.

  1. Ceremonies such as standups, retrospectives and scopings, serve clear and specific functions, and follow structured formats leading to outcomes.
  2. Work sessions, such as group hacks, are intended to execute on work and produce results, live.
  3. “Meetings” are all the other synchronous gatherings, inside or outside of IT

Lighten the load

Use Documentation and Tools to Replace Meetings

Before scheduling a meeting, consider if you can use our available tools to replace or avoid the meeting entirely. Can your questions or issues be addressed in a Jira story, on a Miro board or in a Freshservice ticket - all of which are themselves documentation by nature?

Make meeting attendance optional

When you work in a distributed organization, the usual assumptions about availability are opposite the norm. We have a growing team working in 5 timezones, which makes synchronous meetings impractical, burdensome, and inefficient. Anyone who has worked in a corporate environment has likely seen the sarcastic “I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been An Email” award.

As a distributed company, we should not look to a meeting by default; when they are necessary, we strive to make in-person attendance optional by enabling asynchronous contribution. In many companies, synchronous meetings are used as a mechanism to create consensus. As you’ll read in the Leadership portion of this handbook, we are not a consensus driven company. People are encouraged to give their comments and opinions, but in the end one person (or sometimes a designated team) decides the matter after they have listened to all the feedback. This works because of our values, which leads Roivant to hire individuals who enjoy being a manager of one, a point detailed in our Efficiency value. Team members are empowered to decide whether a sync meeting is the best use of their time. You should aim to record all meetings, particularly when key individuals aren’t able to join live. This allows team members to catch up on what transpired, adding context to notes that were taken during the meeting. Learn more about cloud recording a meeting in Zoom.

When you need a meeting

Meeting Etiquette

  1. Respond to meeting invitations. Always respond to meeting invitations, even if the response is tentative. This helps the meeting organizer plan the agenda, be notified of a need to reschedule, etc.

  2. Be on time. Please be respectful of other’s time by arriving on schedule. If you’re going to be late or can no longer attend, be sure to send a quick Slack message to the meeting organizer to let them know.

Key Practices

Key practices to consider during any meeting are listed below.

Video Calls

If this is your first time meeting with someone, turn on your camera when you login to Zoom. This will help to make them more comfortable as they are certain your undivided attention is geared towards them. By default, try to use your camera for all meetings, but video fatigue is a real thing, so do set personal boundaries and feel free to disable video if you need a break.

Agenda

Always have an agenda, written in an O365 Word Document, prepped and ready to go. Share this with your audience. Make sure that everything on the agenda is accurate and ask if there’s anything missing that needs to be addressed during this call or for the future.

70/30 Rule

Ask open ended questions that leave the audience talking 70% of the time, while you are talking 30% of the time. Please note that this varies based on the type of meeting that you are conducting. Be conscious of what questions need to be asked and to capture those items.

Take Notes Realtime (or ask someone to do it)

Effective note-taking is a valuable skill that will help you retain and recall any important details. Be the person who remembers all the details of your audience’s needs.

Adapt to Audience Tone

Before going into the business portion of your meeting, evaluate first the tone of the audience. Adapt your tone accordingly in order to appeal to various types of personalities.

Mid-call Check-in - Half-way through the meeting, check in with your audience. Ask them what their thoughts are on the progression of this meeting and if what you’re presenting is on the right track. This helps both you and the audience by re-aligning expectations and making sure the meeting is going the right direction.

Pre-Close Summary

10 Minutes (1-hour meetings) or 5 minutes (30 minute meetings) prior to ending the call, ask the audience to build out an agenda for the next step or meeting. This helps to secure next steps and to ensure there are no balls dropped.

Post Meeting Action

Immediately write down additional notes and next steps in the meeting document.

Document everything live (yes, everything)

It’s not rude to focus on documentation in a meeting. A surefire way to waste time in a meeting is to avoid writing anything down. Meetings within a distributed company require documentation to be worthwhile.

  • During the meeting, add input and feedback from attendees to existing agenda items.

  • When referencing a team member’s name in the meeting agenda, do your best to ensure that both the first and last names are displayed. (e.g: When we write the name of the person who is speaking in the agenda, we should write the first and last name or use the tagging feature as a prefix)

  • For action items, we should go directly to a Jira story or service ticket. This creates a direct takeaway from the meeting, where ideas are summarized and action can begin immediately. For optional attendees, or key team members who could not attend the meeting live, tagging them in the resulting Jira stories/service tickets enables them to get themselves up to speed and contribute when it is suitable for their schedule.

  • Record the meeting. You can always delete an unwanted meeting, but you cannot turn back the clock and record a meeting retroactively. This is particularly important if you want to present or wish to have a written transcription of the meeting. Zoom’s Cloud Recording supports transcription natively, and Otter is another popular transcription tool.

Avoid hybrid calls

A hybrid call is one that has a mix of participants in the same physical room, together with others who are remote. Hybrid calls should be avoided, as it’s better to have everyone on a level playing field for communication and discussion. If a hybrid call must happen, everyone should use their own equipment (camera, headset, screen) even if they are physically sitting in the same room. This ensures that everyone is on the same playing field in terms of call experience. If possible, it’s best to separate briefly for the call and find your own workspace, creating a 100% remote call. This helps avoid audio problems from delays and feedback.

Scheduling Meetings

Rather than asking Roivant colleagues if they are available for an event, please use Outlook calendar and its Scheduling Assistant to find the best slot available, and send an invite. These calendar invites will automatically show up on all parties calendars even when the email is not opened. It is an easier way to ensure everyone has visibility to the meeting and member’s status. Please respond quickly to invites so people can make necessary plans.

  • Every scheduled meeting should have an online O365 Word document (no attachments) linked. Each doc should have an agenda, including any preparation materials (can be a presentation). Ensure the document has edit permissions for all participants. Take notes of the points and to-dos during the meeting, or find a volunteer to do so. Nobody wants to write up a meeting after the fact,and this helps to structure the thought process and everyone can contribute. Being able to structure conclusions and follow up actions in real-time makes a video call more effective than an in-person meeting. If it’s important enough to schedule a meeting, it’s important enough to have a document linked. It keeps everyone on the same page.

  • Please try to schedule meetings at :00 (hour) or :30 (mid-hour) to leave common start times available for other meetings on your attendees’ calendars. Meetings should be for the time needed, so if you need 15 minutes just book that. 1. When you need to cancel a meeting, make sure to delete/decline the meeting and choose the option Delete & update guests to make sure everyone knows you can’t attend and don’t wait for you.

  • No agenda is required for informal or social meetings.

  • A suggested format for team meetings agendas is: New hire announcements, bonuses, promotions, and other celebrations, READ-ONLY, and Discussion items, with numbered agenda items beneath each header.

  • If you want to check if a team member is available for an outside meeting, create a calendar appointment and expect the team member only after they respond yes. Then invite outside people.

  • When scheduling a call with multiple people, invite them using an Outlook Calendar that is your own, or one specific to the people joining, so the calendar item doesn’t unnecessarily appear on other people’s calendars.

  • If you want to move a meeting just move the calendar appointment instead of reaching out via other channels. Note the change at the top of the description.

  • When scheduling a meeting we value people’s time and try to preference the “shorten duration for all events” setting in our Outlook Calendar. This gives us meetings of, for example, 25 or 50 minutes leaving some time to: Write notes and reflect, respond to urgent messages, take a bio break, stretch your legs, or grab a snack.

Vendor meetings

We request external vendor meetings to use our video conferencing tool, Zoom, so we can quickly join the call and record the session if we need to. Confirm with vendor that they agree we can record the call. The DRI for the vendor meeting will generate the zoom link and share with the vendor.

  • Decide ahead of the meeting who should be invited (i.e. those likely to get the most out of it) and agree on internal agenda items/requirements/priorities to provide to the external provider.

  • In order to make the best use of time, avoid team introductions on the call, particularly where there are a number of us attending. We can include a list of attendees with the agenda and give it to the vendor before or after the meeting.

  • When a question or issue is raised on the agenda, if the person who raised it is present they will verbalize it live on the call; or if they are not present, then someone should raise it for them.

  • Where possible, we request that the vendor provides their slides / presentation materials and any other related information after the meeting.

  • Do not demo your tool live, create a pre-recorded walk-through of the tool and make it available to Roivant before the meeting so we can ask questions if needed.

  • Be cognizant of using inclusive language.

  • We respectfully request that everyone is mindful of the time available, to help manage the call objectives effectively.

Focus Fridays

The goal of Focus Fridays is to maximize efficiency by creating designated meeting-free space within our weeks for focused work, which also aligns with our push to operate asynchronously. Other benefits include reducing potential burnout, and being more thoughtful both in and about the meetings on the other days of the week. Guidance for Focus Fridays includes:

  • Cancel or move any standing meetings occurring on Fridays (ceremonies and work sessions excluded)

  • Urgent and important one-off internal meetings might not be avoidable, but we should aim to minimize them as much as possible and defer to async work where we can

  • Consider blocking off your calendar as “busy” on Fridays to block your work time

  • Consider looking into apps like Clockwise that can provide recommendations on how to refactor your calendar for focused work

  • Consider using Fridays to dedicate time to your learning and development. FIXME: Need learning and dev page

You are encouraged to talk to your manager for guidance on how best to embrace Focus Fridays on your team and with your individual schedule.

Meeting Cleanup Day

On February 14, or the Tuesday after if this day falls over the weekend or on Monday, we have an annual calendar cleanup day. This is a day when all team members are encouraged to look at their calendars and reassess the value and frequency of recurring meetings. The goals are to increase team member efficiency as team members stop attending low value meetings and reassess how to make continuing meetings more productive. Team members should be empowered to:

  • Cancel meetings or change the frequency if they feel that the current cadence does not add sufficient value

  • Remove themselves as meeting attendees if they don’t feel that they are contributing or that participation supports business results

  • Ask other team members to reexamine how existing meetings are managed

When cancelling a meeting, a team member can copy and paste this message to send to attendees: I evaluated the need for this meeting as part of Meeting Cleanup Day. I have determined that the meeting is no longer needed. Please get in touch if you have any concerns.

When changing the cadence of a meeting, a team member can copy and paste this message to send to attendees:

I reassessed this meeting as part of Meeting Cleanup Day. I have determined that the meeting no longer needs to happen as frequently. Please look for an updated meeting invite and get in touch if you have any concerns.

If you are a team member who intends to decline a meeting, the asynchronous communication section of the handbook has some good suggestions for what to say when you decline. Meeting Cleanup Day is intentionally a few weeks after the start of the new fiscal year.

Common Meeting Problems

Meetings are incredibly expensive since they require synchronous time. The most common meeting problems can all be addressed by following the above guidelines around scheduling meetings. Some of the most common meetings problems are outlined below:

Problem Solution
Present instead of Q&A Pre-record presentations on YouTube, so meetings are only Q&A
Meetings set up for or default to brainstorming People should default to making thoughtful proposals async and building upon them in meetings, if needed
No agenda with edit rights for everyone Ensure that every meeting has an agenda and is available for everyone to edit
People are late to meetings or don’t have time to use the restroom between meetings Use Speedy Meetings to give people breathing space before their next meeting

Smart Presenting in Meetings

If you are hosting a meeting, make sure your presentation is not too long and keep the visuals simple - no one wants to read blocks of text on a Zoom call. It’s also okay not to have a presentation or have a pre-recorded presentation. You can make a pre-recorded video presentation or deck and attach it to the meeting agenda. At least 24 hours in advance of the meeting, announce in Slack Channels that the meeting has a pre-recorded video, and all attendees are advised to watch beforehand. Use the meeting time for Q&A versus presenting information to the audience with slides.

Pre-recorded presentations enable the following:

  • Pre-recording the presentation allows the time to be used for back and forth Q&A, which enables meeting attendees to have their questions answered on the topic without running out of time.

  • Reinforces Roivant IT’s Bias Towards Asynchronous Communication because it helps team members in different timezones to consume the presentation material async versus spending time in a meeting.

  • Strengthens self-service and self-learning by maximizing the meeting time’s efficiency to ensure that team members have their voices heard during the Q&A.

  • Standardizes the approach to meetings across the organization.

  • Pre-recorded meetings have transcripts that can boost content value, help team members focus, and increase accessibility.

  • Recordings can be sped up and rewound by team members watching on their own time.

  • Enables neurodiverse equality for all team members who might take some time to process the presentation and reflect on their questions before asking them.

  • Allows for selective watching of presentation material for a certain period. There are times when presenting during a meeting is needed. This may occur when adding more context to a specific topic on slides. If this is the case, consider the following:

    • A presentation, with optional attendance and mandatory recording. This will allow clarifying questions to be asked and answered efficently and enables team members to watch async.
    • Include an async Q&A doc for team members who did not attend the presentation.
    • Ensure the async Q&A doc is linked in the YouTube description.