Too often, a status meeting is something you inherit from your predecessor. A weekly one-hour session in which everyone gives an update on what they worked on, and all the successes they booked during the week. It sounds professional, but does it actually add value?
If you need that meeting to really know what’s been going on, ask yourself whether you actually have a grip on your project. And let’s not forget: everyone knows that management will be watching, so the slides are carefully tailored to appear, at the very least, green. Creating those slides eats up several hours that could have been used to fix the issues being reported.
I’ve seen it not once, but many times, where two or three team members discuss a problem in detail, while the rest of the group sits silently, entirely unaffected. It’s a productivity killer. And the message you, as the PM, shared with the group — could that not have been sent as an email? Would it not have been more useful to deliver it in one-on-one conversations, where you can actually see how people respond?
I don’t mind repeating the same message fifteen times, because I can adjust it to each individual. I can see whether it lands, what questions it triggers, and whether it makes sense.
If your status meeting exists just to narrate the project while everyone shares a coffee, cancel it. There are better ways to exchange information and better uses of everyone’s time.