Netflix's CEO loves to do walking meetings, and a lot of the other execs follow his example. It's especially nice since the HQ is next to a lovely creek trail.
The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.
> The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.
For some reason, walking meetings tend to work like a memory palace for me.
Though I walk down a pretty specific set of landmarks and write notes afterwards, which is usually ordered by the walk trail landmarks & a follow-up would usually not need a set of notes either.
There was a time when the smokers used to be the ones to do this as a matter of habit - these days it is much healthier to do walk-talks.
> The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.
Not recommending that everyone try to learn this, but Wolfram has rigged up a laptop so that he can walk and work at the same time (scroll down to the photo of him w/ a hat in the woods and a walking desk to see what I mean):
Hey, I've been interested in the twiddler for quite a while but I've been hesitant to buy one since I haven't seen much evidence of anyone being actually proficient in using them, most of the videos on youtube are just unboxings and first impressions.
How fast can you type with it? Can it be easily used for key-combinations using modifier keys and such?
I'd say it's OK.
It's not even remotely on par with typing speed on laptop-size keyboard, but I'd say it provides a reasonable trade-off. And it has enough keys to use desktop software without much pain one way or another.
You need to have the space and privacy for it. Let us assume you discuss important/private things during a meeting. If you work in the middle of the city, then talking about such whilst outside might not be the best place.
If your office is near a forest or something, then it makes more sense.
Heck, we don't even always have privacy in office meetings due to lack of space.
Yes, but it is taking a round-trip walk for the purpose of a meeting, not squeezing the meeting on the walk from "task A destination" to "task B destination", as would occur in a Sorkin show.
Ah I see what you're saying. Yes, they are often round trips.
But sometimes they can be from one task to another, especially if both people are going to another task (usually another meeting) in the same building.
APIs from google and Microsoft are getting quite good at this, these days. They even have corpuses of domain specific words and acronyms they can pick up.
I started walking as part of a weight management strategy, when my team noticed I was doing these walks we started doing 1:1s on walks rather than in the office. They were much better.
I find it easier to think things through while I walk so I added a recorder app to my phone so that I could verbally take notes while I was walking in order to not forget things that I had thought about or thoughts that came to me on the walk.
It has been a very productive change, not to mention it helps with managing me weight so definitely a win.
FWIW I don't record meetings, I record notes when I am walking by myself. That said California is a two party consent state so if I were to record a 1:1 I would insure that I had the other person's ok to do so (recorded :-))
It depends on where you live. My understanding is that in most places in the US you have to have both people's consent. However, in New York, for example, due to laws put in place to make it easier to fight organized crime, recording doesn't require the other person's consent.
Saw a comment long ago mentioning that our early nomadic ancestors must have spent much of their time wandering the landscape, probably for miles a day. What neglect do we bring to our brains when we don't do even a fraction of this?
I have learned that going for a walk is best way for me to think through a tricky problem. Something about the act of walking around almost immediately kicks my brain into a different mode that can do wonders for my thought process. It has to be a leisurely route though, meaning minimal dodging of cars or interacting with people.
Our bodies are undeniably made to walk and not made to sit. Maybe we should redesign our work to involve more walking and less sitting. Walking is hard to combine with computer work, unfortunately.
My experience is that certain types of meetings work really great this way whereas others do not. Collaborative 1:1 type meetings or "same side of the table" meetings where you need creative thinking to work through some complex issue really shine as walking meetings. Where there are concrete points you're trying to get across or in general more "information sharing" type meetings tend not to be so great in this format or at least they definitely need a followup email to ensure everyone understands the takeaways and actions expected.
I used to do many/most 1:1s as walks but I found that if you have a serious piece of feedback to deliver etc it's often not as good on a walk and if you always do a walk and then send an email saying "let's do it in the office today" it sends a signal which makes people immediately defensive.
Separately I'm a very rigorous note-taker (using a paper book) and one of the big benefits of walking meetings (from my pov) is that people are not sitting with a laptop and are actually intellectually present at the meeting. I just make sure to recap the actions/takeaways as the very last thing before we wrap. Then it's easy for people to remember them and take them back to the desk with them. You can also send a followup email to ensure you're in 100% sync.
Being semi-serious for a moment, I'm genuinely unsure which strategy is best. On the one hand, why not unlock all of your brain's potential? On the other hand, would it make sense to consciously choose which type of thinking to enable? Basically open only the door that leads to the path you want to take.
The effect of walking on improved conversation is so strong for me I have, for a long time, been wondering why it never caught on in the psychology community.
I wonder how much more effective talk therapy could be if delivered while walking, at the driving range, over table tennis, etc.
I pace when I'm thinking about work stuff. I find that being upright and mobile keeps me more alert and focused than slouching in my chair, in front of a distraction jukebox. Some people I work with like it (though, they joke that I should buy a school with a racetrack to walk around...)
I would love for walking meetings to become the norm. Though, I'm aware that there's a lot of folks who are the exact opposite.
I can easily walk in circles a few hundred times when thinking, sometimes hours at a time if there's a particularly big thing to think about, and do it with other people around if I forget not to.
I would love a workplace with long distances to walk around and to have walking meetings.
In fact, what a great idea. I'll try to ask people for walking meetings in future. (With sensitivity to the fact some people find walking hard, even painful (back problems, knees, energy levels etc.), especially if it's for a long time.)
I'm surprised no one's mentioned one of the greatest advantages of walking and talking - spatial memory.
I used to go to a therapist who would hold walking sessions along a trail or path in a park. The best thing about it, besides forcing me to get out of bed and be in nature, was that I could remember exactly what we talked about and when, based on landmarks along the trail (e.g. "we were discussing X when we walked over this bridge). Similarly, I find that if I have a phone conversation while driving, I can remember it much better because parts of the conversation correlate to locations I passed as I was driving.
I find voice conversations over the phone pretty good while walking, using wireless headphones so my hands are free.
I do this a lot and pretty much forget I'm walking, can do it for hours if a call or series of calls needs it. As a result, it's probably my main exercise, and I much prefer this over a phone conference or chat while stuck in a chair.
I was just thinking that walking meetings really work in today's environment because as you are walking you get the chance to get in contact with more people that were not originally supposed to be in the meeting and give them things, or get things from them.
Great read, I like to record meetings on my phone(with permission) which allows me to listen and take in as much as possible before going back and reviewing what I missed on my phone.
I have a friend whose boss likes to 'go for a walk' or 'catch up whilst we head over to X'. Naturally she's wearing high heels and it's a fucking nightmare for her.
I'm afraid I feel my level of sympathy would be 100% correlated with how mandatory the heels are for your friend :-/
On aside, I'm also (genuinely, not snarkily) curious to understand the "Naturally" part in front of "wearing high heels". Don't get me wrong - I personally think they're a fabulously attractive if completely impractical article of clothing, but it feels like in many places in the world they are far from the norm/regular/Natural assumption.
I mean it's not 100% clear cut like that. Has the person told the boss that it is uncomfortable? They could easily just be oblivious to the problem. Secondly, if it's not mandatory there has to be a point where you decide to do what's best for you.
For example, it gets really hot outside where I live in the summer but my office puts the AC at ridiculously low temperatures. For me that means I can't wear shorts in the office because it gets too cold. I wouldn't wear shorts every day and act all surprised about it when nothing has changed nor think anything is sexist or even a personal attack on me.
I’m confused by this comment. If this person knows they are going on walking meetings I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to bring shoes to walk in.
If they want to wear high heels regardless of this knowledge and have no requirement to wear high heels, I feel no sympathy.
I also wonder if encouraging this form of meetings could be viewed as discriminatory if you have employees who have physical disabilities that might make walking unpleasant or slow.
My wife has done walking meetings, particularly with very small groups (2 or 3) or phone meetings. But she currently has a knee problem that makes walking unpleasant and slow.
I guess checking whether all participants are fine with a walking meeting is an essential part of the process. CEOs demanding a certain style of favourite meeting does not go well with that.
I think some of us miss that step in growing up where you're supposed to realize you can own lots of shoes for occasions other than fashion. You can have some that are fit for only one activity or used in one location (eg, the gym or exercise class).
Keeping a spare pair of shoes at work would solve this problem.
Sounds like an opportunity to keep a pair of tactical flats in a desk drawer.
"opportunity" here sounds kind of crappy because of the boss/employee power dynamic and the man/woman thing to boot, but if she's not offended by the implication that she should bend to meet the demands of her boss, it could be seen as a plain savvy thing to do.
edit: just noticed I assumed the boss was a dude, maybe that's not the case, but the boss/employee power dynamic is the main bit
Requiring uncomfortable footwear is the problem, not the walk. I'd take the walking meeting as an excuse to ditch the heels. It's entirely possible to find good-looking shoes that have low heels and are comfortable to walk in.
It's 2020 , time for management science to learn how to do science. No, it isn't science to take a study of individuals solving problems and extrapolating that "walking meetings work". It's bs.
Management science fundamentally cannot be science. There’s nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace (or outside for that matter).
The best you can do is apply statistical approaches to arbitrary abstractions, and the main thing we learn when we do that is that return to the mean is the only thing we can really be sure of?
While nothing might be too strong a statement, several studies have shown things like changing the light level in an office increases productivity - it doesn't matter what your started with or end up with. Given this how can you study the optimal light level in an office?
Walking meetings are not accessible. If you have blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound colleagues, walking meetings are a wonderful way to exclude them from participating equally in the workplace. That's of course unless you don't already "solve" this issue by just not hiring such folks.
I really wish people would think about this. And not only in terms of their current workplace demography, but also their prospective future employees.
Same for talking. Same for presenting visual information.
The key is to be cognizant of the people on your team. It may be possible to take a "walk" in a wheelchair-accessible location or do some similar activity. The only way to address this is to ask your team and build a culture of trust on this issue.
The solution is obvious: you solve the issue by not having walking meetings with people who can't effectively participate in them. Why is that so hard?
Because it's not actually obvious who can effectively participate in them. Are you checking your meeting participants for suitable footwear, asthma, underlying allergies, chronic health conditions they'd rather not disclose to colleagues...
Then, ask. Again, simple. Problem solved. Why do y'all want to make these things so hard? It's not that difficult to say "are you okay with a walking meeting?"
Okay, and is your direct report going to tell you no? Or are they going to worry that they're going to miss out on the opportunity to actually influence their boss because they don't participate in this week's fad?
Yes, they are. Otherwise, US law and social convention place the responsibility for not giving a straight answer on the employee. At a certain point, adults employed by a company need to take some responsibility for themselves. Once you’ve asked if they’re okay participating in an activity, and they say yes, that threshold is reached.
Not sure why parent is downvoted; this is a serious issue.
The issue can of course be solved by only have walking meetings when all participants are okay with it, but that does not go well with CEOs insisting on this type of meeting. And anyone preferring walking meetings may end up having less meetings involving people who have trouble walking.
At the same time, banning walking meetings is certainly not the solution; walking is clearly healthy for our bodies, and apparently also for our minds. Just be flexible about it and considerate about all participants.
The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.