Meetings

[ghostrunner]

Actually that's not true about the 8 hours and melting, because starting Mar 1 I started working 9 hour days and it's not easy. getting used to it. The reason I'm doing it is because now I get every other Friday off - so I work 9-9-9-9-8 and then 9-9-9-9-0. And it's really 9.0 and 8.0 - when Mr. Slate blows that whistle it's yabba dadda do and I'm out of here.

We've been told that we have flex time. We are free to get here any time before 8am, and leave any time after 5pm. It is great.

I was told I have 104 days off every year, why do I need to worry about free time during the week?

Not sure if it's good or bad that I can't conceive of liking any job enough to deal with that.

[stlouie_lipp]

I think "Can you put some bullets together and send to me?" belongs in the corporate speak thread. I get emails like that from some of my bank clients. I want to say, "no, I can't bullet point legal issues", but I can't so I struggle though. I hate having to say, "it depends" to all their questions. One of my clients jokingly said to me the other day "you just don't like to answer questions without all the facts". He's starting to get it.

[Popeye_Card]

The bullet point emails are the bane of my existence. I fully understand the need to be concise for upper management--they have a lot on their plate. But I also know them--some of them are comforted by knowing all of the technical details, and others are more concerned about the personnel and planning involved. So I have to pack them all in there, along with all of my caveats (because like lipp, "it depends...") in just a few points.

The bad thing is, when they read it they think they were simple to put together. I mean, how long does it take to type up a few sentences? Hell no. Depending on the topic, sometimes it will take an hour to put together each bullet, because of how carefully you have to craft the message. So sometimes I will have to spend an entire afternoon typing 5 bullet points.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

The bad thing is, when they read it they think they were simple to put together. I mean, how long does it take to type up a few sentences? Hell no. Depending on the topic, sometimes it will take an hour to put together each bullet, because of how carefully you have to craft the message. So sometimes I will have to spend an entire afternoon typing 5 bullet points.

So many emails take an hour or more to write. Sometimes, I'll get done, look at the clock and think, wow, I just spent an hour and a half writing a 200 word email.

But, yeah, it's tough sometimes to craft a message that can not be questioned without explaining the scenarios. I find myself typing out the scenario and then like in A River Runs Through It going back and taking out 3/4 of the explanation. Terribly inefficient.

[jim]

I took a workshop from the lady that wrote this:

http://www.amazon.com/Be-Brilliant-Busi ... 158008222X

She was outstanding. I haven't read the book, but knowing her philosophy I could recommend it. Be concise, get to the point right away, and don't be pretentious because you think it sounds business-like.

[Radbird]

We had an "all-hands" meeting today. One of the "process improvements" mentioned was keeping meetings to 30 minutes and 5 charts.

The meeting took 90 minutes and there were 56 charts.

[go birds]

i just rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell right outside my head.

had a conference call that went on and on and then as it's about to wrap up, the ole boss wanted to take some time to congratulate a co-worker for all the hard work she did for several months on the "monthly challenge". This is an idea this co-worker came up with on her own and then continued to shove it right down our throats every single month. i don't know a single coworker who thought it was "fun" and "a break from the monotony". IN fact, i just ignored every single email about it that came my way. Sorry, im a busy person.

They gave her a $500 gift card! $500!!!!! for this!!!!!

i nearly threw my phone out the window.

[IMADreamer]

Admittedly I had very little taste of the corporate world but meetings always seemed like a waste to me. If you couldn't get your point across in a minute or two it seems like maybe that wasn't being very efficient with workers time. I hated sitting around table listening to someone blab on about something. Presentations were the worst though. Back when I was making memorials I never had formal meetings. If I needed to talk to someone about it I would just do it whenever.

At the farm a meeting is pretty much a bunch of us leaning on a truck at the end of the day drinking a beer. That's a pretty good meeting.

At my side business my two employees and I had "meeting" Monday because we are nearing the end of our current production run. So we spent about five seconds deciding what we were going to run next. It helps that we are all on the same page but it's pretty awesome when you can get something settled in a few minutes and then back to work. I wonder how much productivity is lost on meetings?

[jim]

We had an "all-hands" meeting today. One of the "process improvements" mentioned was keeping meetings to 30 minutes and 5 charts.

The meeting took 90 minutes and there were 56 charts.

That's funny. Did you synergize?

Off to my 1:00 Enterprise Architecture Board meeting. I've been an esteemed member of the EAB for well over a year now at my work, and I still have no [expletive] idea what it is, or what we are supposed to do. I go to the meeting and I hear words coming out of mouths. They say they value my level headed reasoning. I don't think I've said 2 words in the year, so I think they just value that I show up and take up space.

edit - just say the agenda. First item on the agenda: Go over the any comments on the last agenda. Last item: Comments on agenda. In between: TBD.

This will be Dilbert-ish good.

[Radbird]

5 friggin' conference calls today. We socialized ideas, netted things out, took step backs, looked the bigger pictures, drilled down, shifted a few paradigms, took things offline (that means more meetings), and at the end of the day leveraged our strengths. Now I'm just waiting for the emails to memorialize these sessions.

I feel empowered. If only I had more bandwidth.