If you want to go to fewer meetings, use information radiators

We have used thousands and thousands of hours of precious meeting time for exchanging information that we could have read in a quarter of the time in a document. 

Heck, we've spent thousands of hours in meetings exchanging information WE already knew, so someone else could learn it.

Many meetings we go to simply exist because the information everyone needs is stuck somewhere only one person can see it, and the meeting is just the clumsy way to prise it out.

People, we need information radiators. 

If you've never heard the term

An information radiator is any display of the information a team keeps needing, put somewhere people can see it without having to ask a single soul.

It might be:
- a shared document

- a pinned post

- a dashboard

You look, you find the information. Nobody had to book any meeting rooms.

If you already know about Information Radiators

The term goes back to Alistair Cockburn in the early days of agile software and he explained it as the opposite to the normal place we put information - the information refrigerator.

Shut away, cold, needing somebody to walk over, open the door and hunt around before anyone else can use it. I personally spend as little time as possible in very cold places! 

A radiator works the other way round. It gives off what it knows all the time, to whoever happens to be near it, whether or not they thought to ask.

Information radiators distribute power around your team

When the information a team runs on is locked in one person's head or one manager's inbox, that person becomes the gatekeeper, and everyone else has to come and ask for permission to know things. Put it in the public (i.e. team) domain and people can see for themselves where things stand, notice what needs picking up and take responsibility without waiting to be told. It's  Adult to Adult in action: you trust people with the full picture, and increase the chances they will make smart choices and take ownership.

My three favourite information radiators

There are three obviously helpful radiators, each of which eliminates a category of meeting.

Radiator 1: The Programme Pulse 

A shared document or dashboard updated async by each workstream lead at a fixed cadence, using a constrained four-part format. The team lead reads all updates, synthesises and only calls a meeting if concerns need group resolution.

Radiator 2: The Decision Log (replaces 'I thought we decided X')

A running record of every non-trivial decision, updated within 24 hours of every decision meeting. Linked from the programme home and visible to all relevant stakeholders.

When decisions are visible, people can engage with them: understand the reasoning, surface genuine new information, accept them as adults. Transparency is a structural feature of a well-run team.

Radiator 3: Project DNA (replaces the recurring context-setting meeting)

A permanent, always-current document that provides the core context anyone needs to work on this programme. Anyone joining goes here first. Any stakeholder needing a briefing goes here first. You stop being the single point of human integration for context that should be self-service.