Ah, meetings!
There are dozens of methods and tips on how to conduct an effective meeting. Just type these words into your favorite search engine and you’ll get endless articles and reviews — for example, here and here. You may ask yourselves, “Yet another post about conducting an effective meeting — so what else is new?”
Well, first and foremost, I’m going to focus on an effective technical meeting in this post — a topic in its own right that seems to be overlooked in most standard literature. Moreover, there are several bad habits that occur during R&D meetings in organizations which are conveniently omitted from the mainstream documentation concerning meeting conduct and efficiency.
Technical meetings differ from other types of meetings in the sense that most, if not all, of the participants hold technical expertise in at least one engineering field, and the nature of the conversation centers around technical issues, as opposed to finance, marketing, supply chain, management, or other domains.
Technical Meeting Types
Lecture / Teaching / Data Transfer
Very often, whether it’s a lecture-type gathering, or a teaching session, or a data-transfer meeting, we need to pass our knowledge onward. This kind of meeting usually flows with little to no interruption since it’s mostly a one-way street: one person talks while the others listen.
Make an effort to show up to these meetings with some kind of presentation — or at least a plan and a storyboard. Without this, you might easily be distracted by other subjects and thus derailing the session from its original intent.
A follow-up meeting to such a session could be a Q&A. In such cases, you should have some materials ready in case you need to show something during the meeting. For example, if the Q&A is a follow-up to a lecture, have the slide deck handy in case you need to refer to it. Of course, you can’t prepare every possible piece of material in advance since you don’t know what questions will come up however it shows professionalism if, when an out-of-the-blue query arises, you can quickly pull out the right content.
Bottom line: The effectiveness of this type of meeting is almost entirely up to the presenter with also a mild dependency on the caffeine levels in the audience’s bloodstream. 
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting meetings are the next level of complexity when it comes to keeping things organized and effective. They are usually very structured: present the problem, summarize what has been done so far, share new data or progress since the last meeting (if any), and then discuss next steps and potential root causes.
These meetings often follow a strict agenda which helps keep them from going off track.
However — and we have to have a “however” here — if the issue is pressing or has a broader impact, more and more higher-ups tend to attend these meetings to track progress. Once this happens the meeting stops being a purely technical one and turns into a decision-making meeting. Read between the lines: when top management starts attending it usually means your mandate to lead the troubleshooting process has effectively been revoked.
When this is the case you should divide meetings into working meetings and management meetings. The level of detail appropriate for a top-management discussion is not the same as in a working-level technical meeting.
It’s also a good idea to “divide and conquer” during multi-disciplinary troubleshooting so as to avoid inter-disciplinary conflicts during discussions.
BTW, don’t worry about team engagement in these meetings. If someone isn’t engaged it probably means they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Decision-Making
Decision-making meetings are tough ones to master especially when a technical discussion needs to happen first since these meetings can easily go off the rails.
The moment you’re supposed to make a decision is often when people suddenly recall all the good, bad and ugly decisions made in the past or even worse, the decisions that weren’t made and are still pending.
Suddenly your meeting veers way off course from the decision you actually need to make.
There’s one effective way to avoid this kind of noise: state clearly at the beginning of the meeting what decision needs to be made. Give participants a short opportunity to express their reservations. That way everyone understands the purpose of the meeting and if the outcome is that the decision can’t be made in this session, (due to technical or managerial blockers), you can postpone it and thus saving everyone time.
One good tip is to have pre-meetings with potential opposition ahead of time so as to defuse any resistance. That way the main meeting goes more smoothly or at least you’re not caught off guard. Yes, it sounds like politics —since it kind of is.
How many times have you heard“Let’s take it offline,” and just knew that topic would never come up again in any meeting — except perhaps the next one you schedule to follow up on the decision you just made. Try not to let all the “offlines” creep back into the current meeting.
Brainstorming / Think Tank
The next type of technical meeting is the brainstorming session or think tank. This should be the simplest meeting — a bunch of engineers and scientists throwing around ideas. What could be easier or more fun?
But reality begs to differ. These meetings often go completely off track. When a ship is left to wander in the ocean with no one at the helm, it might end up in Antarctica instead of the sunny beaches of Thailand.
Even if we want wild ideas on the table the discussion still needs direction. If say we’re developing medical devices we shouldn’t end up brainstorming about V8 engines, right?
It’s important to keep these meetings within some boundaries or they won’t serve their original purpose. That said, setting a formal agenda can be counterproductive here — we want the meeting to be free-flowing.
In other words, the success of this meeting depends entirely on the adult in the room. If there isn’t one be sure to take plenty of coffee breaks.
Social
Given the focus on technical meetings, you might wonder why social meetings are included here.
Well, I’ve had my fair share of happy hours and team get-togethers and somehow, in most of them, there’s always at least ten minutes of technical discussion.
We all know this happens and we also know that good ideas often come up in these settings — especially when we explain an issue to someone not directly involved in the project and get a fresh perspective.
There’s a catch, though: since these meetings weren’t meant to be technical you might not have any data or materials prepared. Also, discussions can easily veer off-topic — or worse, the happy hour morphs into a full-blown technical meeting (over beers — not always a good idea).
The trick is to cut off the technical talk when it becomes the main topic. That’s usually not the intent of these social events. It’s the responsibility of the group or team leader to be the grown-up and keep things casual. It’s also your responsibility to notice potential collaborators or resources in these informal chats.
Meeting Hijacking
Continuing from social meetings — hijacking happens a lot in our industry.
A technical meeting meant for one topic ends up addressing a completely different one — just because of who showed up.
There are two kinds of hijacking: personal and professional.
Personal hijacking is when two (or more) people bring unresolved personal tensions into their professional interactions. The solution here is, unfortunately, political. Use your imagination. Maybe ask them to send representatives instead, or manage the meeting tightly so their argument doesn’t take over.
Then there’s the “joker” in the room — usually a manager who shifts the discussion. For example, a meeting focused on mechanics suddenly veers into Control issues instead of Mechanics issues because the Control & Electronics group manager is present. This is a professional hijacking.
The way to handle this is polite assertiveness:
“Folks, this isn’t the topic of this meeting. Let’s get back on track.”
In my early days, I didn’t have the confidence to push back on managers hijacking my meetings — but it’s something you learn with time.
Meeting Attendance
Nowadays, it’s too easy for meetings to become bloated with 15+ participants — especially online. We all make the same mistake: inviting anyone who might possibly help with the issue.
Soon, our calendars are filled with meetings that we have little or no professional relevance to.
Rule of thumb: If you’re not contributing to the discussion or not benefiting from it you shouldn’t be in the meeting. Just push back or decline.
The reverse is also true too: don’t invite people unless their presence is essential. Overloading someone else’s calendar — especially with face-to-face meetings — can cause them to be a passive (and sometimes disruptive) participant.
Jeff Bezos even coined the “two-pizza rule”: if two pizzas can’t feed the meeting attendees, it’s too big (not sure how he pulls that off — I can eat six slices by myself ).
There’s another side to this: if you’re knowledgeable or experienced you may become so “useful” that your calendar fills up from 9 to 5 with meetings. This leads to double-booking, overtime work, and eventually — burnout. Or worse, people multitask through meetings and stop paying attention altogether.
Some companies enforce a “no-laptops” policy during meetings. Ironically, this can make the multitasking problem worse.
The issue is so widespread that some companies, just to let employees get real work done, have declared meeting-free Tuesdays (or any other day).
Another practice is stand-up meetings — literally, no Chairs. This keeps meetings short and people more engaged. However, when longer discussions are needed, we’re back to square one.
Online vs. Face-to-Face
With Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, and all the rest, many meetings today are held online — sometimes with no two participants in the same room.
Online meetings offer great benefits: no need for a meeting room (a scarce resource in most offices), everyone can hear clearly, the participant count is virtually unlimited, and there are fewer side conversations.
There are, however, some downsides. Face-to-face meetings offer a different energy. If you need a whiteboard or want to spark spontaneous ideas, being in the same room helps. It’s also easier to keep people’s attention and to “read the room.” And yes — side chatter can, sometimes, actually lead to breakthroughs.
Furthermore, not everyone is equally proficient with online tools — technical issues can delay things or cause distraction.
There’s no right or wrong here. Know your team, and know your topic. Sometimes, a face-to-face meeting is non-negotiable.
Technical Meetings Summary
Rule #1 of history: whoever writes the history decides what the history was.
Same goes for technical meetings — whoever writes the summary defines the meeting’s outcomes and action items.
Thanks to AI tools like Read AI, Grain, Fathom, and others, you can now get meeting transcripts, summaries, and action items automatically. These tools (at least in English) work pretty well.
Effective teams rely on good communication and what better way to measure communication than through meeting quality?
Some AI tools can even measure participant engagement and contribution.
Don’t skip the summaries. They’re critical for tracking progress, following up, and keeping projects moving forward.
Dos and Don’ts in Technical Meetings
- Invite only the people you really need.
- Always have a presentation ready — even if it’s just one slide.
- Disarm both professional and personal landmines ahead of time.
- If the meeting outcome is important, write the summary yourself (or control the AI that does it).
- Choose face-to-face meetings when necessary.
- Avoid scheduling high-focus meetings:
- Right after lunch.
- First thing Sunday (or Monday) morning.
- Thursday (or Friday) afternoon.
- First day after a holiday.
That’s it for this post.
Somehow, it ended up way longer and with much more smileys than I intended but I’m sure many of you will find it a pretty accurate representation of your day-to-day. Hopefully, some of these tips will help make your technical meetings more effective and productive.