Re: for those of us that suffer thru conference calls
My issue is with meetings run by people who don't know how to run a meeting.
We begin with an agenda - a plan detailing the sequence of issues to be covered. It seldom goes ten minutes before a non-agenda item is introduced and the entire room turns onto that item for twenty to forty minutes. Could have shelved it for later discussion; could have identified two or three people to develop the issue and present it at a later meeting, but no. We all sit and discuss something for which we were not prepared.
When this concludes, we turn back to the agenda and repeat the cycle. Over and over and over again, until the coffee pots are empty, the donuts are gone, everybody's butt hurts, and at least half of the participants have tuned out. Oh, and no one can actually identify those individuals who are responsible for taking charge of each of the issues and delivering a result - because no one was assigned or volunteered.
By the end of the "meeting", we have one or two new (vague) principles to pursue in place of one or two of the vague principles with which we began, a room full of fatigued people, very few problems developed and solved, and a date set for the next meeting.
I see this occur with vice presidents and senior managers, district directors, et al, all because the individual running the meeting has no clue how to do it and the participants don't appear to realize that they've just been scammed.
Actually conference calls, in my experience, tend to work better because - for whatever reason - it's easier to keep the attention on the issue(s) for which it was generated. Someone takes notes and publishes minutes. Everybody leaves with a task related to the issue. We seem to be more effective with that method than by getting everybody in the room and just letting fly.
Don't the business schools know how to teach this...? We learned it in engineering curricula in which we were focused on the issue(s) to be managed.
I've got another of these scheduled for February 4th, and I'm dreading it, as I find a little harder each time to control my desire to intervene and facilitate the discussion. I just may do that, career or no career. The process is so silly and counterproductive.
