Author Archive
Meeting Planning
Still working on that project of meetings that don’t waste people’s time. I’d like to do better than that — meetings that are fun, meetings that get things done, meetings that inspire or build teamwork for the future — but there are still a lot of stuck patterns that get in the way of making even the low bar.
For one thing, we’re still struggling to get remote people able to participate in a meeting. At our last meeting, we planned ahead to run Skype, but had last minute problems both human and technical. And Skype is not an ideal solution when a handful of people are remote and the vast majority are in the room. It’s just not what it’s for. We’re going to try Skype again but I’m also interested in investigating other conferencing solutions.
For another thing, keeping enough control over the agenda but not so much that I don’t get to find out anything new by having the meeting, is an interesting balancing act. One thing I’m learning is that going around the room giving reports by division is almost always a fail. Boring. Disjointed. No narrative. It worked once, when the question around the room was “what do you have to do to get ready for X deadline” . But open ended reports? Not making me happy.
Next meeting, I’m planning to experiment with getting the division reports boiled down to about a sentence or two each and onto a handout in advance.
It is completely impossible to over-prepare for running a meeting. At least I haven’t managed to do it yet. The meeting I’m currently trying to over-prepare for is a full-day retreat of about 25 people — almost all my division heads and some of the assistant division heads. I think they trust me not to waste their time at this point. But I’d like this to be really something special, and fun.
Good challenges and … the harder kind
Sarah Twichell (of the blog Edge to Center) asked me today What makes the difference between a challenge you rise to and a challenge you’re overwhelmed by? Good question, and I had to think about it for a bit. Here are a few things I thought of:
On the overwhelm side:
- tasks that I think are going to get a lot of negative judgement from others
- tasks that I can’t break down into pieces that I know how to do
- tasks where you can’t get feedback on whether it’s going OK until the end
- times when I’m not managing adequate self-care,
- excessive multi-tasking.
On the successful side:
- when someone is depending on me
- when lines of authority are clear
- when the purpose of the task is clear
- when I have enough time to make a plan
- when I can reach out for support
Challenges don’t fall neatly into one category or another. I can easily be daunted by one aspect of a major project even as I make progress on related areas. Sometimes I just have to plunge ahead, overwhelmed or not.
Thinking about this helps me be more sympathetic to other people’s overwhelm — and helps me think of some ways to improve how I’m delegating so I’m not adding to the problem.
Some Thoughts About Email
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: communication, email etiquette
Comments (14) Sometimes the best response to email is to just not say anything. In addition to the Right Speech guidelines of “Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true?” you might also have to ask “Is it Actually My Job?” “Is it timely?” “Is it useful?” “Is it congruent?”
If you’re aggravated. If the words in your head sound snarky or short tempered even to yourself. Probably this isn’t going to go well. Managing tone in email requires first of all managing your own inner conversation.
If you haven’t given other people enough time to solve the problem themselves. Or if the email has been sitting there for too long in a fast moving situation, and you need, first, to check if you’re responding to a current reality.
If you’re just cc’d on an email. You’re probably just being copied for information. Maybe answering this email really isn’t your job. (Even if you have the information — see above about letting people solve their problems.)
If your answer involves information you don’t have time to actually look up but you’ll gesture vaguely in the direction that it exists. If you’re not sure what response you want next from your email, keep thinking and refine the question or the answer.
If you’re saying something on behalf of someone else, or to protect someone else. In general, shut up and let them speak for themselves.
I sometimes send 10, 20, even 50 emails in a day. Do I get this right on all of them? I’m sure I don’t. But each time I consider these questions first, it goes better in the end.
If you ask people whom you consider to be wise and courageous about their lives, you may find that they have hurt a lot of people and made a lot of mistakes, but that they used those occasions as opportunities to humble themselves and open their hearts. We don’t get wise by staying in a room with all the doors and windows closed. — Pema Chodron
Metaphor of the Day take 2
Well there has been a crazy long gap between posts here, but there are still about 120 days to go until the convention, and there will probably be some ruminating afterwards. Rather than regretting the lost summer (and spring) of blogging, I will just start where I am.
I said to someone last week, “after Labor Day, it’s a long fast downhill slide to January”, and a Former Conchair agreed. “Yes, that’s just how it is.”
So, now firmly in the slide, committed to the downhill and picking up speed rapidly.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Three sentence email is the idea that all emails should be no more than three sentences long.
Email takes too long to respond to, so pledge that all emails will be answered in three sentence or less. Well if you take that pledge, I hope you are not using these emails to form or reinforce a relationship, convey a complex concept, or convince someone of a new idea.
Actually, if you are taking that pledge, I hope you’re not emailing me.
And to get started …
Where better to start than a New Year’s Resolution?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m trying to accomplish in the next year, and one of the things I’ve been doing is laying out a calendar of the meetings we’ll have. Years of experience have shown us that we need a certain frequency of meetings to get everything done. But we don’t always use our meeting time well. Gathering people into a room because it’s that day of the month again, and going around and hearing status reports without context or dialog? Doesn’t get people engaged.
So here’s the New Year’s Resolution: no boring meetings. I’m not sure I can pull off being entertaining and creative at all these meetings. At least, no pointless, annoying, time-wasting meetings. The ground rules surely have to include
We all know what we’re trying to accomplish in this meeting.
The right people are present at the meeting. Conversely, people who aren’t necessary for the purpose of the meeting don’t feel like they’re supposed to show up “just because”.
At the end of the meeting, we know what to do next.
If we’re interested in the outcome of the process, then these meetings won’t be boring. We’ll be able to see how these meetings are building up towards where we’re going.
I made this resolution thinking about my work on ThatCon but immediately started thinking about the weekly status meetings I run at $DayJob. Well, those meetings are less than engaging, honestly. I need the information from those status reports and I still feel like that. $DayJob meetings have a handicap in that we’re meeting over a telephone conference line. I’m going to think about that as I head to first status meeting of the shiny new year tomorrow morning.