Foo - Tons of meetings, but nothing gets done

Does anyone ever feel this way?

I've been spending a lot of time in stupid meetings lately. You go to the meeting, and it usually starts late (I hate people who are late, but that's another story). So there's a wasted 5 minutes right there. Then it seems like whoever is in charge of the meeting will talk for 5 minutes without really saying anything at all. When you get into the "meat" of the meetings there's always a whole lot of talk but no action. "We need to do ____, let's talk about that in our next meeting (or even worse, let's set up a meeting to talk about that)." "Let's all think about this and talk more about it next time." AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! It drives me insane.

Here's an idea: Let's have a meeting and actually do some ****ing work and get something done.

Read Pat Croce's book... I Feel Great (and you will too)

He's got a great section on how he handled his meetings.

They suck if not handled properly.

I'm on my fifth hour in a row of calls.... the one I'm on is already over an hour longer than scheduled.... but getting things accomplished.

You're right, though.... for most conf calls and meetings there is that lag time. When I run a meeting at the allotted time I start. Anybody that's late has to catch up on their own.....

Thank goodness for Bike Forums to survive the lag time!

I feel your pain, bro.

Luckily I moved to a different division and things aren't as bad in this division, but when I was in the previous division of this company, it was almos non-stop meetings and then more meetings to inquire why I was behind in getting the WORK of the project done.

But the best was my own department meetings held by my manager. We had company goals each year which our bonus depended on how well we, as a division, met the goal. Of course this started in January....so by September my manager is still saying in our meetings "that's a good idea, Chris...let's talk about how we might do somethign to implement that in the next meeting". Then HOLY COW....it's Ocotber....we better start actually DOING something to make this goal......

What a bunch of freakin' morons!

Does anyone ever feel this way?

I've been spending a lot of time in stupid meetings lately. You go to the meeting, and it usually starts late (I hate people who are late, but that's another story). So there's a wasted 5 minutes right there. Then it seems like whoever is in charge of the meeting will talk for 5 minutes without really saying anything at all. When you get into the "meat" of the meetings there's always a whole lot of talk but no action. "We need to do ____, let's talk about that in our next meeting (or even worse, let's set up a meeting to talk about that)." "Let's all think about this and talk more about it next time." AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! It drives me insane.

Here's an idea: Let's have a meeting and actually do some ****ing work and get something done.

I'm thinking that you and I must work at the same place. LOL

Ah ... meetings.
In the midst of one now.
With my entire company, me. Over lunch and a beer.
Here's to being self employed!

but how will you set up the next meeting without having a meeting?

Our meetings usually aren't bad however our problem is the floating specs, the changes, etc. So the specs say xyz will be done and then in the meeting they say we want x, and a and b and c.

I get sucked into about 10-12 hours of meetings per week. When crunch time hits, and I really have to get things done, I start mercilessly declining meeting invites. It comes down to, if I don't need to be at this meeting to get what I need, then I'm outta there. During slack periods I'm more generous with my time. Hey, gotta save some time for BF surfing, right?

Does anyone ever feel this way?

I've been spending a lot of time in stupid meetings lately. You go to the meeting, and it usually starts late (I hate people who are late, but that's another story). So there's a wasted 5 minutes right there. Then it seems like whoever is in charge of the meeting will talk for 5 minutes without really saying anything at all. When you get into the "meat" of the meetings there's always a whole lot of talk but no action. "We need to do ____, let's talk about that in our next meeting (or even worse, let's set up a meeting to talk about that)." "Let's all think about this and talk more about it next time." AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! It drives me insane.

Here's an idea: Let's have a meeting and actually do some ****ing work and get something done.heh, heh... I worked for for a company where the owner had to meet with everyone daily to make sure they are doing their job the way HE would be doing it if he was in their position. Talk about micro-management. He even dictated which hand the marketing guy should use to dial the phone so that his other hand would be free to take notes and be more efficient. So we've got a company of 20 people operating at the pace of 1 man because no one could get any work done until they've had a meeting with him to make sure they're doing their job correctly... :eek: The last year I was there, they had to hire 25 new people just to maintain a staff of 20...

Tons of meetings, but nothing gets done.

I believe this should read "Tons of meetings, so that nothing gets done."

Hope this clears up any confusion.

Ah ... meetings.
In the midst of one now.
With my entire company, me. Over lunch and a beer.
Here's to being self employed!

Clearly you need an employee. What do you pay?

I hate meetings, especially ones without a clear agenda. I can sometimes see where a meeting is useful, but half of them, especially where I work, are simply redundant.

He even dictated which hand the marketing guy should use to dial the phone so that his other hand would be free to take notes and be more efficient...

I used to have a boss that did the exact same thing.

We just had a 10 minute phone conference. Didnt quite answer the question but made sure that the proper people would be made aware of our question and helped clairfy a few other things

I hate meetings with a passion.

My opinion: meet to set up a gameplan, then STFU until you all have executed as planned, unless something came up. If they cannot execute as planned, then they need to be moved to a position where they can execute as planned, or replaced.

I hate status meetings...if the boss cannot figure out how everything is going...then meybe the company doesn't need this particular manager. I used to work for a start-up where our manager didn't even do anything for our dept....we ran autonomous of any supervision at all, and were incredibly efficient despite this.

...then we got bought out...and supervisory buffoons and beauracracy slowed us down to a crawl.

...sometimes less is more. Less meetings is more work....novel concept ;)

status meetings! don't get me started on that.

we used to have a very informal team meeting every week where we quickly went around the room and gave status. 10-15 mintues - in and out. very effective.

then management wanted to keep better track of everything - for accountability i guess. so we sent a weekly email with our status and then had a team meeting on top of that.

now, the emails weren't working for some reason, so we have an excel spreadsheet to populate and we're supposed to send that. plus the weekly team meeting, and NOW additional one-on-one meetings every other week. all about the same stuff.

My staff ask me if we are going to have a meeting (we are suppose to do it weekly, but really don't need to) and I say yes, were having it right now!!!
I like to take them on walks get them outside and talk, away from the office, friday lunch dates and stuff.
I think if its something REALLY,REALLY important you should do it but most of the time its people telling you something that you already know.

Ahahhahaha welcome to my world. I spent like 2 hours a day in some stupid meeting that doesn't get anywhere and I get blamed for taking too much time on stuff.

Ugh, we had another stupid meeting...pretty much the ENTIRE FORKING TEST ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT had to sit through a meeting about a problem that isn't even TE related....it's a product revision issue....basically the fools at the board fabrication sent us old and incompatible stuff....

/sigh You know....at least the painkillers for my thumb make me feel all tingly and stuff, otherwise I would end up saying something I should'nt have at that meeting....like "So do we have direct conrol of board fab now? Since it sure does seem like we are meeting ontheir behalf, not ours....so if we do this, can I get a forking cookie? I like peant butter."

I don't like classes, does that count?

I'm the only grad student in the lab, so meetings are whenever my advisor happens to drop by.

elvis costello
welcome to the working week

Welcome to the working week Is that what you meant?

Is that what you meant?

Yeah... thanks for the clarification. I'm sure people were terribly confused.

Extremely confused, either that or extremely bored and felt like rewriting it :p