Bad Meetings
Jan. 31st, 2006 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI know, everyone has bad meetings at work, but meetings at my job are usually good. Except not today.
Meeting 1: Wait for other person to get ready. Wait for person to read through documents received a week ago. Person gives up and asks for summary. I point out summary I pointed out a week ago. Person wants more details. I give more details. Person adds no insights. Person says I should ask other person what the situation is. I point out that we can handle the worst-case scenario, and if it's not the worst-case scenario, it can turn into it at any time, so we should take that into consideration regardless. Person insists that I ask about the scenario. I ask and report the answer. At least the meeting was short.
Meeting 2: This is one of a series of weekly meetings between four people who know stuff (who I will refer to as "bureaucrats") and two people who need to learn it (who I will call "programmers") so--and I'm just guessing here--we can create a better system. Programmers are late. Bureaucrat begins meeting anyway. Programmers miss important info and important abilities to understand later info. Programmers don't want to talk about little fixes but want to see the big picture, to form a unified theory of the problem, if you will, so that we can have a simple, elegant solution. Sounds good.
Also, sounds impossible. For example, when two classes are meeting together, Scheduling wants to know because they need to put the classes in the same room and so the room is big enough. I want to know in case I need to mark the courses as having the same content. If the courses can be fully designated with numbers (some are partly unnumbered), Official Publications wants to know in case they should document that the courses are the same in every way but name. Students like to know that a course of interest to them is being offered, even if it is taught by faculty from a department they wouldn't think of peering into. Other people don't care. People like you.
Meeting 1: Wait for other person to get ready. Wait for person to read through documents received a week ago. Person gives up and asks for summary. I point out summary I pointed out a week ago. Person wants more details. I give more details. Person adds no insights. Person says I should ask other person what the situation is. I point out that we can handle the worst-case scenario, and if it's not the worst-case scenario, it can turn into it at any time, so we should take that into consideration regardless. Person insists that I ask about the scenario. I ask and report the answer. At least the meeting was short.
Meeting 2: This is one of a series of weekly meetings between four people who know stuff (who I will refer to as "bureaucrats") and two people who need to learn it (who I will call "programmers") so--and I'm just guessing here--we can create a better system. Programmers are late. Bureaucrat begins meeting anyway. Programmers miss important info and important abilities to understand later info. Programmers don't want to talk about little fixes but want to see the big picture, to form a unified theory of the problem, if you will, so that we can have a simple, elegant solution. Sounds good.
Also, sounds impossible. For example, when two classes are meeting together, Scheduling wants to know because they need to put the classes in the same room and so the room is big enough. I want to know in case I need to mark the courses as having the same content. If the courses can be fully designated with numbers (some are partly unnumbered), Official Publications wants to know in case they should document that the courses are the same in every way but name. Students like to know that a course of interest to them is being offered, even if it is taught by faculty from a department they wouldn't think of peering into. Other people don't care. People like you.