Performative meeting culture and roleplay

I’ve started to think a bit more about the way we roleplay, through LARPing for example, and the similarities to the cultural acceptability of how we work.

In a particular org, there is a default for doing meetings. We tend to learn about it through observing other people in the org and just seeing is the default way to do things.

In my current org for reviews it turns into: writing a huge doc, read it a bit at the beginning of a short meeting, and then just let the loudest people speak to their concerns. Maybe look through the comments and highlight those someone thinks are important or that they can answer quickly.

Another trope is the “status/action” meeting where a Google doc collects the items before (and during) the meeting. Then we just go in order based on which were added first.

There are various people involved in larger meetings to get them set up. Chiefs-of-staff, TPMs, executive assistants, etc. They bring their own flavor, usually through the “primary” that they do the work for.

I’m sure there are others…

If we were to take more care in how we did these for the particular need I wonder how different it would be? How much would be adjust different meetings? Or would we just set new heuristics that are followed semi-blindly without questioning them?

I also start to think about how we might want to replay a meeting in different ways to see what works better or worse. Could we do that with the same doc a few times? Would leaders be willing to experiment with that? Or would it be considered a waste of time?