- Meetings have a bad rap, and the truth is that meetings are a good way to share information, foster cohesion, mitigate conflicts, air differences and deal with areas of overlapping responsibility. Yes, meetings are tedious at times and stray off topic but, meetings certainly beat long email threads. Don’t worry that people moan and groan about “another meeting”. They groan about rain as well.
- People don’t read, they skim. Not because they are tired or overworked, but because of an outbreak of attention disorder due to excessive use of smartphones. If you cannot be brief, you don’t exist.
- People complain about how hard they work, and how they are all “in a rush”. However, while people spend a lot of time at work, often they are surfing, texting, or playing busy. Almost everyone can do more work than they are actually doing.
- Not all outputs at work are measurable. And assisting someone else to “score” can be more valuable than achieving your own pre-defined goal.
- The more that roles, responsibilities and processes are defined, the more things will fall between the cracks and bucks will be passed. It is impossible to define away complexity.
- All organizations are extremely political. Politics, the use of persuasion and power, can be used to further the goals of an organization, or to enhance personal power within an organization. So there is good politics and bad politics; there is never “too much” politics.