Rant because I'm just so frustrated. My work has this obsession with meetings. Instead of calling, or emailing, or doing a quick message, if management sniffs out there's a small issue, we gotta have a meeting about it. And since the issue on hand kinda involves another department (if you squint) we gotta have them in the meeting ALL OF THEM, oh, and it might pertain to a whole separate department, too, so better bring them, ALL OF THEM. This means we will have multiple meetings a week with 15-30 people, all sitting there with nothing to share, because one person in Accounting isn't getting a single monthly invoice scanned over from the receptionist at another facility. This could've been a simple email, but now we all have to bear witness to this. And we all have to be called on, individually, to add our input to the situation. When we have no input.
We occasionally have these company surveys, which always result in executives being shocked that the main complaint is “too many pointless meetings”. So then they scrap EVERY meeting. Only to slowly add them back in over the next few months. To rinse and repeat.
Well, meetings were once again a big complaint this year, so the company president decided to sign us all up for a spiffy meeting program. Honestly, the program is pretty cool, lots of trackers, lots of ways to add important meeting notes. Really, it's a great program if used correctly. But of course we aren't using it correctly because no one has anything to put as a meeting “main topic” because, like I said, our meetings are over something so minor it should've been an email.
So we spend 10-15 minutes doing a round-robin introduction of “good things happening in our lives”. This is not voluntary. You must provide something good happening in your life. Failure to share results in getting scolded for “not being prepared” and not “having something good going on”.
We then do the 5 minutes of “what the meeting's about”, sort out the issue (which generally results in people going “oh hey send me that in an email and I'll get right on it”.), Followed by 30 minutes of us being individually called upon for our input and 'any other things we need to share with the team?' Everyone does a chorus of “I don't have anything to add, blah blah”, which really upsets the executives in the meeting because we should “always have something for these meetings”. We need to prepare better.
So, we get to the glorious end of this pointless 50 minute meeting, they're finalizing the program's meeting notes, and now we each get called on individually AGAIN to grade the meeting out of 10 points. The group generously grades it a variety of 8s and 9s because the executive thinks this is super important and we don't feel comfortable grading it the honest 4 it truly is. We get to the end of that. And now we each have to JUSTIFY our grade and explain why it isn't a 10. “Because these meetings should ALWAYS be a 10.”
So, we delicacy try to come up with excuses “well there were technical issues.” “The intro meet and greet went on too long.” “The whole meeting is just too long.” Someone even bravely says they aren't sure why they were in this meeting because they had zero part of this side of the business. Management just isn't having it. These meetings NEED to be a 10. We now have to “prepare better” for the next meeting we're having tomorrow to “make up for this one not being a 10.”
We will continue to have this SAME meeting until it is a 10/10 score. I've already spoken to a few folks, and they plan on scoring it a 2 tomorrow, because ” we already had this meeting, and this redo is a complete waste of time.” I'm already mentally preparing for the crapfest that will be tomorrow.