Weekly 1-1 meetings don’t allow for deeper brainstorming

Related:

• § 1-1 meetings.
• § Problems with recurring weekly 1-1 meetings
• A sub-point to Weekly 1-1s force you to work in unnatural ways.

One issue I’ve found with recurring weekly 1:1 meetings, is that they don’t allow for deeper brainstorming.

A best practice of regular 1:1 meetings is to have a shared agenda, and with that, both parties add to this agenda in advance of the meeting. It’s common to have 4-6 items in the agenda, and if you schedule an hour, this means you’ll have around 10 minutes for any topic.

The problem here, is that each topic ends up treated equally, when they should not be. Some topics might only need 10 minutes, others may deserve an hour.

And when you have weekly 1:1s for all direct reports, you generally do not have much free time in your schedule for these deeper brainstorms and discussions: Weekly 1-1s come at a significant cost in time which could be used more effectively.

One solution to this is to move from weekly to monthly 1:1s, and create time for deeper brainstorms: The benefits of switching from weekly to monthly 1-1s.

-> weekly 1:1s don’t allow the right people to meet.
Hierarchy can stop the right people meeting