On my remote team, every meeting turns into an “everything” meeting

1. Every meeting should have an agenda in the invite. I know some folks go as far as ignoring meetings that don't have one.

2. One person should own and drive the meeting.

3. Intention of every meeting should be producing some kind of result: action items, decisions made, people responsible, dates & milestones, etc.

Based on the short description you provided it sounds like nobody owns/runs the meeting.

If that's your responsibility (or you choose to make it yours) then keeping people on track is your job. You shouldn't feel like an ass for doing your job, you should feel like adult.

This hasn't been my experience at companies that started remote-first, or in companies that had a lot of cross-geo/TZ meetings, because there's both a culture and policy of having agendas and DRIs (Designated Responsible Individuals) who keep the meeting on task.

But it was a problem at a company that were once primarily colocated and then converted to remote work during the pandemic, where the "everything" tendency was a side-effect of losing other modes of communication. People who once had passing, unstructured, "everything" conversations in hallways/kitchens/etc. try to cram those opportunities into every meeting they have with others.

Identifying this helps redirect those conversations into other venues. Even just saying "hey, this is a really good thing to talk about, can we either bring it back up after this meeting's over or chat about it when we've got some free time" can be enough.

The deeper issue is still that people who used to connect one way have lost that connection and haven't found a way that feels equally natural to regain it. Some people thrive on having unstructured, not-strictly-bounded, short conversations, and remote work tools haven't done a great job of enabling them because they're all mutually opt-in (for really, really good reasons).

It would take some cultural adjustment, but even just a Slack-or-equivalent channel where people can drop in and out that has an explicit rule of, "If I'm in this channel, you can talk to me whenever about whatever, it's OK" can help people who want or need this kind of connection. (Discord nails this with voice channels, and I don't know if Slack has anything like it — if it does, no place I've worked uses it.) Everyone else can avoid it or limit their exposure, just like they would in an office by avoiding common spaces, wearing headphones, or just saying "nah sorry I don't have time to chat".

Check the manager tools podcast, they have some really good tips for this. IIRC a bit spread out but there are specific meeting episodes.

A big one is that you can empathize with the need to discuss things in general, and also emphasize the goal to focus on one topic, and if you do both of those at the beginning of the meeting you are more likely to get what you want.

Another big one from my own area of specialty is that people aren't always in control of their interactions despite best intentions. There are "resting/venting" and "party" combinations that naturally occur when specific perspectives come together, even when the individuals in isolation consciously want nothing of the sort.

So A) another good reason to stay away from too much blame and B) possible hint that meeting composition can be helpful to look at as well.

Good luck.

As others have said, at the very least you need a clearly defined Chairperson, and a clearly defined Agenda. It's useful to also state required participants for each meeting (by billet, not by name), and especially the Information Exchange Requirements. What are the pieces of info that feed into decisions made at the meeting, and what are the expected output products? Who is responsible for each input? What format should they be (PowerPoint slide, text document, etc.)?

It also helps to have a standardized format for documenting and disseminating information about the structure of your meetings.

Here's an older format example of what we use in many US military Joint Task Force headquarters: https://studylib.net/doc/5573463/b2c2wg-7-minute-drills-and-...

Here's a further description of the concept: https://realkm.com/2021/10/11/organization-management-rhythm...

Common issue and not nennecessarily remote related but it might have become worse the past couple years because of it. Whether its your meeting or not, you must keep things on track. It's your responsibility more than anyone if it is your meeting but as a team, you have to do it together. I interject and even interrupt if I have to.

Sometimes it can be abrupt and seemingly a hard response but I try to say things like "Hey all, this is a good conversation but let's get back to XYZ topic for this meeting." Other times it can be helpful to state a reason why its off topic before you draw the group back. Contextual.

It's also a great team feedback/retro discussion to have with examples and how you can stay on better track in the future. This includes training how to run meetings and like wise how the team can support staying on track.

Yikes.

Agendas are good, and the person running the meeting should try to stick with the agenda.

Sometimes it's hard though, if senior people within the meeting start steering it off course and the person running the meeting is a lower level and doesn't feel they have the right to steer the conversation back.

I don't know how I'd fix it, other than just subtly always steering the conversation back. Or you could just jokingly say "we're off topic! Stick to X dammit!" Depends on the culture, probably wouldn't fly at a lot of places.

Imo, it's really up to the person running the meeting to keep it on track.

IMO, although I lack details of your specific situation, this has nothing to do with remote.

The lack of a culture of writing and async work (sending a well-researched email, setting the meetings agenda) contributes to this. In my experience, when people cannot be bothered to write their problems in emails/slack and prefer to always jump on a call, they are generally prioritizing their time over yours.

As others have said, have an agenda.

Also, whoever is leading the meeting needs to have a second person there who's job is to help refocus the meeting so that the agenda is followed. It's too much for one person to lead a meeting and fend off every random comment made by the team.

Yep, we have this problem. One of the issues is that the manager is always late so people have generally started the chit-chat before and he doesn't interrupt.

It would be better if he got in, listened for a second then said: "Sorry I'm late in, let's get things started" and then at the end said to person who was talking "X you were talking about Y, what's the deal with that?" and pushed the conversation to end of the meeting, and then people can leave if they don't want to chat.

I think there has been a general consensus that remote work can be lonely, so people do like to build bonds with their colleagues in a natural way rather than have a specific, let's have a team building moment scheduled for Tuesday.

Good meetings don't just happen. Set, and stick to, an agenda with times. Set a second meeting that's more open-ended with optional attendance. People need the social aspect, and it will pop out at the seams of you don't make space for it.

John Cleese Meetings, Bloody Meetings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JpC67gw7B8&ab_channel=MetaM...

There's many great practical tips about how to make an effective meeting here, but take a step back:

Whose work is getting done in this meeting?

Most of the time, it is your manager's work that is getting done. Next, ask whether the meeting is prepared for, whether it is an informational or decision-making meeting, and who is required to attend it.

Are all of these things required face-to-face/synchronously? If not, think of ways to make them more async friendly saving everyone time. Sometimes you will need everyone in the same room to make decisions or inform them on decisions that have been made.

But the thing is, an "everything meeting" wastes everyone's time. Maybe you could sell it that way - "The way we're doing this is wasting everyone's time; lets get better at not doing that."

Ideally, this shouldn't be you, but you (plural) addressing this. You might be able to initiate the idea of keeping meetings on track, but you need buy-in from others, that they also start helping keep meetings on track.

Some time ago I summarized my personal meeting etiquette here:

https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/04/tips-and-tricks-for-meeting...

It's not made for remote, but most rules should apply. Hope it helps.

Make sure that every meeting (if it is necessary) has an agenda, and follow it – strictly. Preferably also send out a pre-read to get everyone up to speed.

For standups we fixed this problem with https://spinach.io.

Yep someone needs to be the ass. Ideally the VP Eng. / Head of Eng. or equivalent should be the superass and set a good meeting culture. Also have retros for people to be able to bring up any topic for further actions.

Are they meetings that actually need to be on track, or useless meetings that people to take a break and just hang out as a substitute for real breaks?

Agenda. Made ahead of time or in the first 5 min of the meeting. Once the agenda is covered end the meeting.

This is why chairmen exist. Your group probably needs one.

Symptom of noob low IQ managers. Just switch employers.