> It's usually possible for the person running a small project to ask everyone for status

Perhaps, for efficiency, they could ask everyone simultaneously in parallel, or at least roughly around the same time?

To maximize creativity and opportunity, perhaps we could then figure out some way to share each person's status update with every other person on the team?

Are you intentionally describing having a Slack chat for a project and asking for status updates there?

You still don't need a meeting for that if everyone actually does it.

Why do you think a larger meeting is a remedy for this? Quite the opposite, if you can't get a personal status from a large group, doing the meeting is completely pointless because it demonstrate lack of preparation.

It's not. That's not what I meant or said. I said not all projects allow for getting status ahead of time.

This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously. They're just bad at communicating.

On a well functioning team I can rely on people just reporting status themselves when something relevant happens and reaching out for help. But some people just don't do that, especially people from other teams, departments, etc.

>This is a nice way of saying that some people just won't tell you what they're up to async, you have to wring information out of them synchronously.

Like, you explicitly ask them in an IM and they don't tell you?

Not telling you on their own, I can understand. If the former happens though, you have bigger problems, that asking on a real-life meeting wont solve.

Seriously. This sounds like, "I can't manage my direct report, so I need to waste the time of everybody else on the team just so the little punk realizes he can't hide forever."

A team meeting should not be the go-to solution for "Bob is bad at communicating"!

It appears you didn't read my comment, here's the relevant part:

> But some people just don't do that, especially people from other teams

Hope this helps.

Oh I read it.

If you're the manager, YOUR job is to figure out how to get the information from the people who owe you a report, not weaponize my presence at a meeting to ferret out people you can't manage to reach.

But honestly the condescending tone of this whole exchange tells me everything I need it to about why you struggle to get information out of people.

Okay, well, if you read my comment saying that sometimes meeting with people outside the team is useful, then you start writing about how I'm wasting the time of people _inside_ my team, then I must have miscommunicated something.

You're reading things into what I'm saying that aren't there.

My job is to defend my direct reports from having their time wasted and clear blockers for them. Sometimes, yeah, this means meeting with people to ferret them out.

I'm not weaponizing anyone's presence at a meeting except mine.