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I work at a college now. Meetings are cordial, short (usually 1 hr) and to the point. I am ok with meetings here.
I used to work for a government entity. We literally had meetings to talk about meetings. Someone screws up - more meetings. Senseless meetings, bloated meetings, meaningless meetings where people pulled stuff out of their #@$ just for the sake of hearing their own voice. I was chastised for not talking at meetings, when in reality I had nothing to say since the meeting got off on a tangent about punctuation and grammar and MS Word templates instead of talking about the actual work product.
Meetings can be productive when the people want them to be, or they can be a colossal waste of time and a prime source of aggravation.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielWayne
Meetings can be productive when the people want them to be, or they can be a colossal waste of time and a prime source of aggravation.
It they're done well they're crucial. It is where people get updated and the group knows what is going on, it is where managers do the managing. Far too many places I've worked at management is spending too much time on content generation and not on managing.
What is the deal with corporate America and meetings?
Given the current problems with communication secruity many people are moving back to in-person meetings instead of electronic communications. It's proving to be a much better approach to building a confident and competent team!
Saving money with email and other electronic communications has proven to be a bad choice. Also email, texting, etc. is becoming filled with foolishness and the games of fools.
Given the current problems with communication secruity many people are moving back to in-person meetings instead of electronic communications. It's proving to be a much better approach to building a confident and competent team!
Saving money with email and other electronic communications has proven to be a bad choice. Also email, texting, etc. is becoming filled with foolishness and the games of fools.
I sort of doubt that. At least, I've never been to a meeting where everything wasn't emailed to everybody ahead of time nor have I any idea how I'd do my job without email.
Let's be honest many meetings are due to poor communication through mangement, supervisor, to ceo or owner of the company. It can be a nuisance boss in another building going all Hitler on the staff with irrational demands then the easy going boss making it look like her building is complient, (but they just let that boss think that.
Many meetings are the productivity is lacking and needs to be tweeked.
I think many meeting are because you have the idiots who can't comprehend what is going on.
I had college classes where the professor gave us a talk what he wanted but many sat down more confused.Many times I would explain to friends in class what he meant in a different way.
Communication and comprehension is key.
My current calendar has 25 hours of scheduled meetings this week.
A rough breakdown of activities:
2.5 informational/daily coordination
8 hours job interviews
8 hours budget/policy discussion and decisions
4 hours coordinating with other departments
And a few random things.
I do very few planning meetings, or meetings to have meetings. Most meetings are goal oriented and result in decisions.
As other posters have noted, many of these meetings result in work for others.
What is the deal with corporate America and meetings? There are meetings to discuss previous meetings, and more meetings to discuss what meetings might need to occur in the future. The number of meetings you attend on a daily basis is directly proportional to your hierarchical position in the company -- if you are a director, you can pretty much expect your entire week to be filled with meetings.
I used to work at a place that had meetings to schedule meetings, and a committee on committees. Usually a sign of bad management, IMO.
It happens in higher ed as well. My wifes boss (a Dean) literally does nothing but hold meetings. I didnt believe her until she showed me her outlook calendar. It was ENTIRELY meetings. The best part was the description of some of the meetings was "To collaborate on next Monday's meeting's topics."
Meetings are very popular in academia and it is certainly possible for directors and above to spend most of their day bouncing from meeting to meeting.
Then the military would make you guys absolutely sick. We have so many meetings.
We have pre-meetings to rehearse the real meeting.
You know it's bad when you have multiple meetings a day about the same subject and people say the same thing with a different delivery. Meeting at 9am, 10am and then another at 7pm... All about the same crap!
As of now we are at about 36 meetings of some sort for the week...
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