The other day I attended a meeting where we wasted 3 hours:
A bulk of time was wasted in waiting as the convener did not
command the respect and besides that he himself had little respect for time.
What else explains a participant-me- readying the meeting room as he grossly
failed to tell this even to the maintenance staff? His reaching just on time-
may be because of his fear of me- and waiting another 30 minutes to bring the
next participant obviously reflected poorly on him?
What about the output?
The output achieved could have been achieved by just 15 minutes
purposeful engagement-over the phone! Yep- that's it.
The process would have been far more superior if the discussion had happened by circulation through e-mail. But that needs vision, clarity of thought decisiveness and some amount of leadership.
Lack of purpose leads to lose of sovereignty!
The process would have been far more superior if the discussion had happened by circulation through e-mail. But that needs vision, clarity of thought decisiveness and some amount of leadership.
Lack of purpose leads to lose of sovereignty!
There are people who just love to boss over and when one of the major purpose of calling a meeting is to dish out plain sycophancy, that leads to no where.
Coming back to our impugned meeting: at the end of 3 hours we left the venue with a sense of emptiness and with serious doubts about the future utility of the decisions taken (subsequently our doubts were proven correct and NONE of the decisions were implemented)
... When we go through such a wasteful experience we rue the fact that we decided to participate in the meeting at the first place.
But please be forewarned : when methodical and honest people simply leave the platform in disgust, genuine management space is ceded! The void is immediately usurped by lumpen elements, who are waiting under the wings! What else explains the caliber and credibility of the current leadership of our country?
So do not give up. If you are not happy with the way a society, committee or a country is functioning; do not just crib and complain, come forward and lead by examples. At a minimum insist on two things:
Coming back to our impugned meeting: at the end of 3 hours we left the venue with a sense of emptiness and with serious doubts about the future utility of the decisions taken (subsequently our doubts were proven correct and NONE of the decisions were implemented)
... When we go through such a wasteful experience we rue the fact that we decided to participate in the meeting at the first place.
But please be forewarned : when methodical and honest people simply leave the platform in disgust, genuine management space is ceded! The void is immediately usurped by lumpen elements, who are waiting under the wings! What else explains the caliber and credibility of the current leadership of our country?
So do not give up. If you are not happy with the way a society, committee or a country is functioning; do not just crib and complain, come forward and lead by examples. At a minimum insist on two things:
- the meeting should have an Agenda- How-so-ever tentative and
- the meeting should end and start in time
Here is a pertinent article on the above:
1 comment:
At times I lecture on "Effective Meetings" (while handling sessions on soft skills).
So, keeping that in mind, this scribbling is posted, which would be further developed into a proper article, in the future. Then that could be used in appropriate set-ups.
I've also attached some relevant data and statistics (through that URL), which i would draw upon to make my outputs objective and factual.
I thought, besides helping me keep a tab on this unfinished project, this would also be of interest to general readers and hence this post.
So enjoy and be a bit detached, for it is essentially an article on the anvil of an avid blogger. For heaven's sake- assuming you believe in the existence of a heaven- please do not read between the lines!
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