Atoms and meetings are surprisingly similar. Just like in science, where atoms are the basic building blocks, for organisations meetings seem to fulfill a similar purpose. Organisations wouldn’t exist without them (apparently). Unfortunately many meetings aren’t as remotely useful (or interesting) as atoms, but there are startling similarities. Let me explain. Basically there are 3 […]
Friends Don’t Let Friends Have Rubbish Meetings. Peer Pressure to ‘Do The Right Thing’
Friends don’t let Friends …. Knit Drunk. Sorry to start a post with such a disturbing image. It all started with a schooner of sweet sherry, now just look at those loose stitches, and the wool colours. All so preventable and very wrong. Sometimes it is necessary to share startling graphic images to highlight the consequences […]
Meetings are a Viral Lifeform. How to Avoid Infection and Practice Sabotage
Meetings are a type of Virus that use humans as hosts to replicate….. That might strike you as an odd statement; but have a look at the Dilbert cartoon and think about how you would answer these questions: Have you ever gone to a meeting where you have no idea why you are there? At […]
Make Meetings Count – Literally, with Meeting Ticker and Clockwork Meetings.
Ask the internet and often it delivers more than you expected. Today was one of those days. About two weeks ago I ended up in a Twitter discussion with Shirley Ayres and Paul Taylor about how much time gets wasted in meetings. It started with a post about are meetings are the symptom of bad […]
Better Understanding – the benefit of meetings. Remember the first time?
Does anyone remember the first meeting they called? I can, it was quite an anxious experience. Suddenly I had POWER! Power to take people away from doing something useful and have them sit around a table with me for a few hours. Outside of the work that kind of power would be considered a big […]
Meetings are the symptom of bad organisation. Yes, but no, but maybe?
For anyone who works in a large organisation this will resonate. You can back it up with comments you might have heard over the years, like; “meetings suck the life-force out of me”, “that’s two hours of my life I will never get back” and “that was a big waste tax payers / shareholders money”. Top […]
Meetings Sabotage, Additional Field Examples
Lately I’ve been spending time in committee meetings. We love our committee meetings here in Wales, although if you’d like an alternative view, here’s Seth’s Blog on “If committees told the truth”. The one thing committees are great for is spotting sabotage and the meeting saboteurs at work. I thought it would be helpful to […]
The Best Sabotage is Undetectable. So how do you spot Field Sabotage in Meetings?
Answer: Read the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. A while back I went to the inaugural meeting of a ‘community of practice’ (CoP). Like many CoP’s they had objective of, “sharing information and knowledge to improving our collective practice”. Nice! Nothing you can argue about there… or maybe not. Astonishingly they spent well over an hour […]
Getting Excited About Governance
Governance isn’t one of those words you’d typically associate with ‘enthusiasm’ or dare we say it ‘excitement’. Strange as it may seem, governance is something that we (Kate and Chris) do get excited and enthusiastic about. We probably spend more time talking about it than might be considered reasonable. There are good reasons for this. […]
Nemawashi. Digging around the roots for sustainable change.
Digging around the roots. If you’ve ever transplanted a tree, or spent time digging up deeply rooted brambles, you’ll get what I’m talking about here. If you haven’t, I’d recommend it. There’s a lot to be learnt from nature*, and a bit of ’17th century Peasant work’ as my son described it. It does a […]
