Today I was invited to a two hour meeting to discuss something I'm interested in. Something I've been driving, without having the formal authority to actually make it happen. However I didn't want to discuss it for two hours. I knew the questions that would be raised, and I knew exactly what the outcome should be; some decisions. So I prepared and asked if I could run the meeting.
We need to take a few decisions, I said. This is the first thing we need to decide upon and here are the alternatives... Do you know what happened? Were people happy for my preparation, so they didn't sit around and discuss for hours?
Guess...
One person objected "first we need to define the words, what do we mean with... ".
There is nothing I hate more than people who want to define the words. Most of the time everybody know very well the meaning of normal words.
The same person didn't want to take a simple decision without claiming "we don't have a strategy for this". A strategy means that consensus is needed which usually includes other people who aren't present.
Well, the meeting took less than an hour.
Next time I'll make sure to bring Swedish Academy's Dictionary, if someone feels like discussing the meaning of words...
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Completely nuts or...?
