Progress meetings

In general, I have periodic meetings with all lab members to discuss their projects, usually weekly or biweekly. These meetings sometimes will be one-on-one and sometimes will be in small project teams. During these meetings, we will discuss progress, results, and/or problems with the continual goal of optimizing the efficiency and impact of lab members’ work.

Although I am sometimes terrible at following them, I believe these best-practices make progress meetings most productive:

• The lab member should prepare and share the agenda in advance. The agenda could be very brief – 3-5 bullet points – and should take no more than 15 minutes to prepare.
• These meetings should rarely be canceled or postponed. Unless there has been sickness or vacation, it is equally useful to discuss things that are not working as it is things that are working.
• Your flexibility is appreciated. I often have one-off events that require coordinating many calendars (committee meetings, consortium meetings, etc.), and one-on-one or small team meetings sometimes need to be juggled to accommodate.