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Excellent points of have been made, and I'll just add one more. If meetings
are regularly missed, interrupted or otherwise ignored, it tends to be a
company-wide problem. Happened here, and management instituted a couple of
policies, the most important of which is, unless there's a crisis with a
client, we are not allowed to schedule meetings before 11 am. The benefit
is that you know in advance that you have "quiet time" in the morning, and
afternoons are for collaboration. You may want to suggest a similar policy
at your organization, you'd be surprised how much support there is for such
time management ideas.
We also have some unwritten policies regarding meetings: 1) if the
scheduler is more than 10 minutes late, attendees get to leave, and the
scheduler owes $5 to the pizza fund. 2)Don't go over allotted time, because
almost everyone has another meeting to attend. 3) Schedule meetings for
folks that are directly impacted, followup with those indirectly affected by
email. (somewhat related to John's WIIFM point).
And keep pushing, diplomatically of course, for recognition that
documentation, and all forms of user support, are key to product success.
Make it easy for them to contribute to your part of the process, and keep
contributing to theirs.
Hope this helps!
Connie P. Giordano
Senior Technical Writer
Advisor Technology Services
A Fidelity Investments Company
704-330-2069 (w)
704-330-2350 (f)
704-957-8450 (c)
connie -dot- giordano -at- fmr -dot- com <mailto:connie -dot- giordano -at- fmr -dot- com>
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to
do it." - Pablo Picasso
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Brown [mailto:stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 2:07 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: True insignificance
Karen,
As Tom said, the absence or tardiness of meeting
attendees is not a factor of your position. It's a
reflection of poor time management skills among those
who regularly attend meetings. That said, John made an
excellent suggestion about taking a WIIFM approach to
encouraging attendence.
Nonetheless, I see this in my current and prior
companies and among meetings called by all levels of
employees and management. Although there are bona fide
priorities that prevent people from attending
meetings, I'd argue that it happens far too frequently
among too many people to be a legitimate excuse.
One tip: Like booking airline flights, schedule
meetings as early in the day as possible so that
you're less likely to be affected by prior meetings
that exceed their alloted time.
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