Me-Tings

My working life has officially become a parody of itself. Today, I attended a 7 hour meeting about...meetings.

Specifically, how to facilitate meetings. Apparently, the topic is complex enough to require a 150 page booklet, 10 handouts, one tacky training video, and a facilitator who has spent 13 years at the company...facilitating meetings about facilitating meetings.

I happen to subscribe to my paw-in-law's theory of meetings:

1. Get in.
2. Tell people stuff they didn't know.
3. Make decisions.
   
4. Get out.

Nobody gets rich or famous telling people useful stuff these days. Work? We're here to work? I thought we were here to play Patty Cake, and make popsicle stick frames for our mums, and those cool potato stamps. Oh, and finger paint! But I digress.

This is the same (pre)school of thought that our newest analyst implant, Airy Fairy, hails from. During a ridiculously circular discussion about what the purpose of a series of meetings was to be, the user suggests that we understand what IT expects to deliver as a result of attending the meetings.

"Well, the hope is that we can complete the to-be analysis in preparation for the use cases. We'd also like a feature list," Analysis Manager suggests.

"And for my part," Mrs. SME adds, "I'd like to solidify buy-in and educate all at the same time."

"So," I venture, "Our purposes are simple: Get buy-in, educate, and make sure we have close to complete information for IT deliverables."

"Weeeeeeell," Airy Fairy trills, tossing her hair, "I'm not sure I'm on the same page there... We shouldn't say the purpose of the meetings is to help with the deliverables. They're only an input to the deliverables!"

So let me get this clear. We have to have the meetings in order to produce the deliverables. In what way is this not a purpose of the meeting?

"See," she continues in her mock-thoughtful tone, "these sessions are meant to be free-thinking brainstorming, where the users are generating creative, wonderful ideas! We can figure out the requirements from there!!"

Okay, someone sit this girl down and explain how babies are made. After 10 years at the company as a business analyst, she admits that this is the first major interaction she has had with users. Clearly she believes that users and IT just hold hands, skip through wheat fields, and magically produce requirements.

"Uhhh," I stammer, "Surely we don't want to go through this whole exercise, and discover that the information did not cover what we needed to get our work done?"

After talking herself round a few more loops, she concedes that maybe something that needs to be addressed during a meeting could actually be considered a purpose. Well done, AF, you get a gold star for effort!