Ask HN: Managers of HN, how do you organize your 1:1 notes?
In the new year, I'm thinking about how to better keep track of 1:1 notes so I can keep track of things and add value to my team. Current workflow seems very ineffective. I'd love to hear how you do it and what you've learned over the years.
Specifically:
1) What is your preferred medium? Why? What software (if any) do you use?
2) How do you use any notes you retain?
3) What has worked for you and what has not?
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this and sharing your thoughts! I try to keep my process down to a minimum in general, otherwise I won't follow it, which defeats the purpose of it in the first place. To that end, I: Take notes in a shared Google Doc with the person that I'm meeting with. This creates less room for miscommunication, and creates a space where we can both leave async notes or topics for the next 1:1. This is largely the extend of the process I follow - I don't prescribe how verbose I am, the structure, etc. I just make sure the important stuff is written in that document. I (personally) take notes in the moment in part to stay focused on the conversation and ensure that I'm communicating clearly. I don't pore over my notes after I've taken them, but find that the act of writing them helps me remember and internalize information that's been shared. Beyond that, what _doesn't_ work, in my opinion, is adding a process-heavy workflow like creating an Issue/PR/Doc for every conversation, or doing anything that's not write it and forget it. Every time I have tried doing something more structured, it's resulted in the process not being followed. I hope that's helpful, and happy to answer any more questions! Thank you so much for offering such great insights. I love the general flair of keeping the process light. I do have a couple more questions: a) When does your google doc go "stale"? (The next 1:1? At the end of the year? When you stop having 1:1s with that person?) b) In your approach, are there things you don't want to share but want to make note of (performance related notes, future ideas etc)? What do you do in these cases to stay organized? c) If you are managing a team of several people over large time periods, that's a lot of google documents. Do you have the need to stay organized over time? How do you do it? Not GP, but similar approach. a) when the team changes, I just move the doc to an archive folder. If they leave the company, I‘d likely delete. I actually had my manager change back to my first over time and we just continued the doc b) Trying to be as transparent as possible, and keep everything in the doc. For performance reviews / career progression, linking from the 1:1 doc. c) seems like you think a Google doc per 1:1? I have one doc per person. Seems pretty easy to manage, unless you manage dozens of people. I have one folder with all current reports and one archive folder with former reports For more info have a look at our handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/1-1/ Thank you for all your answers - the handbook link is super useful! +1 I also encourage the person I'm meeting with to add items to the agenda running up to the 1:1. Sometimes I'll respond async before we meet and just check that I answered their question/resolved the issue so we can spend time in the 1:1 on things that don't just need a quick answer. That's a great idea and makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, what do you actually want to spend the majority of your time on in 1:1s? Same guy from other thread. Spend 5 to 15 min socializing, the rest talking about deliverables, updates I have to give to them, any concerns they might have. Depending on the „season“ there are topics like performance reviews, etc. We use Lattice (https://lattice.com), I do weekly 1:1. The thing I like is that as I come up with topics I add them to the agenda. During the meeting we go through the topics, check them out and possibly create followup tasks. Lattice auto-add the tasks to the agenda of the next meeting. Before I was using a single GDoc/person, with <date> and a list of bullet points. Pretty much doing the same thing as Lattice.