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"Most unproductive meeting of career?"

2 stories

Story 1:

Company had 5k people working for it. We all had to attend a meeting about holding effective meetings.

Rule 1 was to have an agenda for all meetings and associated information so that people can come prepared.

In my 19 years at that company I and one other guy were the only people who followed that rule. Including the executives (never followed it).

People thanked me for doing it all the time... then they'd hold their own meetings and no agenda.

🤷🏻‍♂️

Story 2:

VP of our department would hold meetings and INSIST people ask questions / get upset if we didn't ask questions.

We were also told what we were NOT allowed to ask about.

At one point there were complaints that support was replacing too much hardware. So after lecturing everyone about replacing too much hardware ... nobody was allowed to even mention that the hardware was actually shit.... but we were supposed to ask questions.

Same VP would come back to us and moan about how he just couldn't get resources for our department... like bro that's your job don't whine at us about it, do the job...

Dude was just a weak man child.

Comments
  • 7
    The second one requires visual clues for the hired audience...
  • 0
    I find very frequently that people's essential disagreements boiled down to two things:

    1. Oblivious or arrogant assholes way above their station.

    2. One or both parties and their inability to understand or pick up on what the other party thinks is important or the manner/specific processes in which the counterparty thinks, makes decisions, and prioritizes.

    Fundamentally most people, even people in high positions, unless specifically trained, are simply bad at communications management.

    This is different from being bad at "communication".

    Communication is being able to effectively convey *your* thoughts.

    Communications *management* is understanding and picking up on the cues of others, in a way that allows you to adjust your communication to best suit them, or to better understand what *they* are trying to convey.

    Misunderstanding is as common as farting in an elevator apparently.
  • 1
    Story 1: Make a point of asking about agenda if sent an invite that doesn't include one.
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