Hey, I Made Something!
Introducing talkback
I, like many of you, have experienced meeting fatigue. Most of the meetings my team have are useful — even needed. Sometimes, though, it feels like the time isn’t well spent. Maybe not everyone participates or maybe the meeting is too short to complete anything. Regardless, the problem seems to lie not with having the meetings themselves, but the effectiveness and the efficiency of each on an individual basis.
My team is new and we’re lucky enough to be relatively open with one another. As a result, we talked about this! Our meetings have improved. They’re not perfect, but the conversations helped.
The issue with many of these conversations is that they often work for a few weeks and then…stop. Meetings revert back to what they often are — a repetitive series of going through the motions. Keeping a team accountable is hard!
That’s why I made talkback. It’s a simple slack extension that let’s users rate the effectiveness of their team meetings in under 30 seconds. It’s all anonymous, happens quickly, and ideally pushes teams to continue talking about their regularly scheduled chats.
Anyone on the team can login to their team’s dashboard, checkout how the group has been doing, and then use that data to talk about what’s working and what needs to change. It’s simple for now, but if people identify with it, I’ll add some other features.
You can check out the current list of features, as well as the mindset behind the product, here!
Why would my team use this?
I told a few friends about this idea — most of them are not on the management side. They identified with this problem because criticizing team processes is hard — especially when they are not leading the conversations. Ideally, talkback provides a way for all team members (managers alike!) to give feedback without feeling singled out.
Having spoken with past managers, I think they are often not aware of how everyone feels about the processes. That’s not to say they are not tapped into the team’s vibe, just that without these reflective conversations, it can be hard to tell how people feel.
talkback is not a “complaint box” — nor is it a tool to call out those who are slacking in meetings (it literally can’t do either). It’s just a way to start the seemingly harder conversations around what’s working and what’s not.
If you do end up using it, I’d love your feedback! Happy meetings too you 😄
