Having a Ball Breaking the Chain

Meetings of the mind

Before this job, I had never worked at a company with more than 200 employees, and that was only once. In my last two jobs, I had maybe 35 and 20 coworkers respectively and that included all of production, the warehouse and the office personnel. In both cases, I was a department unto myself taking care of all the graphics and most of the marketing needs of each company. There were few "procedures" in place and fewer reasons to have meetings. Everyone knew everything everyone else was doing, every time and every place. Everyone get that?

My present situation is, shall I say, a wee bit different. Along with literally hundreds of Standard Operating Procedures, there is always a meeting on one or another phase of the project either in the planning stages (wherein everyone is sent the agenda and encouraged to contribute their five cents worth - allowing, of course, for inflation) or being held (wherein several people stop by your cubicle saying "going to the meeting?" and troop en masse to one of the dozens of beautifully appointed conference rooms) or it's the post-meeting dissection (complete with emailed minutes so you won't forget a second of what went on.)

I, personally, am over it. The first few weeks, it was nice to be face-to-face with my new colleagues, getting to know them and the corporate atmosphere and finding out what was expected of me. Now, thank you very much, I would like to have the time to actually DO some of that work, without being interrupted three or more times a day to shut my computer down and attend another meeting.

We have big meetings in the auditorium. Little meeting on the outside balcony. Medium sized meetings with snacks and drinks brought in to conference room 2-7, which is across the bridge, up the stairs, between two other departments full of people who look up from their desks to watch us invade their territory and plant our flag on the island of their big, shiny cherrywood conference table.

One day a couple of weeks back, I checked my calendar to find that I was scheduled to attend no less than six meeting in one day. None were to last less than an hour, two were 90 minutes and the three in the morning and the three in the afternoon were all back to back to back. Add in the fact that they were in various far-flung corners of the two ginormous buildings we occupy and picture a bunch of people, clutching agendas and pens and notebooks, scurrying to and fro, asking each other, "do YOU know where we're supposed to be next?" Go ahead, picture it and try not to laugh. No, I couldn't either.

The absolute, break-down-and-laugh-like-an-idiot-no-matter-WHAT-impression-it-makes moment came for me when I realized that meeting number six of my six meeting day was all about the proper planning and execution of... wait for it, it's worth it... the MEETING! Yep. There's even an SOP to cover it.

I, personally am most fond of the rule that imposes a moratorium on meetings both Wednesday afternoons and all day Fridays (although, there is a place on the company intranet where you can apply for special dispensation to have a Wednesday afternoon or Friday meeting if it's important enough - I kid you not.) I like to think that someone with great wisdom and an eye on the bottom line realized that not a lot of work is getting done during 7 hours of meetings in an eight hour workday. Most likely, however, that's when most of them have their tee times.

posted by Sheryl @ 12:55 AM