Talking or Typing

[KrissKross]

I can get get jobs done rapidly that take some of my colleagues hours. They need to have meetings and discussions even about basic topics that if they just focused and got on with it would be done very quickly.

Do you guys have a solution to this, maybe its me but I am not fluffy and cannot stand time wasting.. Bah hurry up!

[andy-xr]

I used to do this all the time, just bang out something and then it would come back with a query that I hadnt thought about, or a point was raised that then needed most of what I was doing to be rethought and rewritten.

Sometimes, meetings about meetings for the sake of it is job preservation. Sometimes it's making sure you dont go off half cocked

[Flooble]

Yes, agree with andy.

It's easy to think "pah, I can do it without talking to anyone" and then deliver something utterly useless.

Equally I have experienced far too many make-work meetings.

The answer I found was to insist that meetings had both an agenda and a set of expected outcomes - no different to any other "product", in project management parlance, the meeting should have some measurable criteria by which it can judged to have been a success. Be that agreeing a new corporate strategy or just having a bunch of actions assigned.

If no objective for the meeting was declared up front but, politically, I still had to attend then as soon as the organiser arrived (for at this sort of meeting, the organiser was invariably late) I would loudly enquire why we were all there.

[KrissKross]

Thanks, I suppose I was just venting a bit of frustration. Some people can waste huge amounts of time and add little value, yet they are generally the first asking for pay rises!

Also I never mentioned making mistakes, I don't make any

[andy-xr]

You manage these people? Or they're alongside you?