I spend a lot of my time in design reviews or business reviews. Either highly technical and engineering-focused, or strategic and business-focused. The goal of these review meetings is for me (as one of a group) to look at the document, artifact, plan, or whatever, and decide whether the quality is sufficient for it to move forward. Thus, the intent of the meetings are to ensure that the item being reviewed is correct, complete, meets all the requirements, and we have identified any potential risks and have mitigation plans in place.

But what I’ve noticed is that a lot of people, in these reviews, are not necessarily working towards that goal. They instead ask questions that are either really obvious to everyone else (and may already even be addressed in the document), or try to point out things that really don’t have that much risk. I think that people need to feel like they have contributed (especially when their manager is also present at that meeting). But if we are growing a strong and skilled team and have good processes in place, then it is within the realm of possibility that the item being reviewed is ready to go and there’s no real comments to be made. How many times have you seen this happen: Someone says, “I don’t really have any comments, this looks good.” yet somehow then talks for five minutes after they say that?

Another tricky part of this is trust. One thing I personally do is I start from a place of assuming the creators of the item have done their due diligence and put thought and time into this. And I definitely try to make sure I’m not simply thinking, “Well, this isn’t the way that I would have done it.” Because even if it’s not, that’s ok, especially if the goals are being met. (Because otherwise you are simply stifling innovation.)

Oh, and one of my biggest pet peeves? When someone in a review says, “Do we really want to do this?” It’s like, “Well, this plan or document wouldn’t exist if someone didn’t think the answer was YES.” Either propose a concrete risk or alternative path, or don’t. But an unsubstantiated comment like that adds no value and does not drive the conversation forward at all.

There is an important other side to this, however, which is you are still a contributor with a unique set of experiences and might really be seeing something that was missed. But bringing this to play is a learned art; how to be thoughtful on asking questions and digging in, and understanding the whole context. An approach I really like is not to just sit there and point out something you disagree with, but ask questions that may reveal your concerns to everyone else. Because sometimes the sentence you hear, or are told, isn’t really the whole story, and you do have to dig in to get the details.

If you work on these skills, your review meetings will become more efficient and more effective, and even more important the people in those meetings will grow in their own experience and skill, which will drive better decision making and analysis skills across your whole organization.