Every Wednesday afternoon my team lead and I have to go to a meeting that I have named the Inquisition Meeting. This should only be attended by the team leads, but, since I used to be the team lead of my group, I still have to go.
In this meeting we discuss what happened last week and if we are prepared for the next week. Ever since my ex-CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager) got promoted he really should not attend this meeting, but sometimes he just cannot stay away. Wednesday was one of those days.
Let me state right up front that I hate meetings. Meetings should be short and rare. While I am in a meeting I am not doing anything productive. When I first joined this group six years ago, I attended more meetings my first year in it than I did in my previous 26 years working for TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name).
We have a project manager that I call the PMICOUM (Project Manager In Charge Of Useless Meetings). His first response to any problem is to say, "We will have to hold a meeting on this." I always say under my breath, "No. We need to fix the farking problem".
I realize that meetings are sometimes required and when they are there are rules to make them short and productive:
1. Start on time! This meeting is supposed to start at 2:00 and we're lucky if it starts at 2:10. This is inexcusable.
2. Have a written agenda and stick to it! There is an informal agenda only and that allows us to violate rule #3
3. Allow no side issues. Take care of them after the meeting. Invariably in this meeting a side issue crops up and the PMICOUM and another member of the meeting go off on a tangent. Meanwhile, the rest of us sit around with our thumbs up our butts doing nothing. Do you know how much web surfing I can do in ten minutes?
4. Finish on time!
Our manager has started skipping this meeting. Smart lady. But, as I said earlier, my ex-CDSMŽ decided to sit in today.
At the end of the meeting we discussed our user satisfaction numbers. I wish I could explain more about our business without giving away what company TCIDNN was so you would know what the satisfaction numbers meant and how they were obtained. What's important is the numbers are trending down. Since my ex-CDSMŽ's performance rating is partially determined by these numbers he wants to try to find out why they are going down. I could tell him, but he wouldn't want to hear about it.
<JackNicholson>You want the truth? You can't handle the truth.</JackNicholson>
I'm on my ex-CDSMŽ's shitlist anyway because I told the truth to a user and called him incompetent. The user went to my then CDSMŽ who took his side and implemented a new procedure. When I sent out a sarcastic note (Me? Sarcastic?) clarifying the new procedure, which made him and the user look like idiots, he denied the procedural change (so it was never implemented) and my career was essentially over. Now I'm much more laid back at work.
I pissed him off twice in Wednesday's meeting. First, he asked my team lead that with our new processor could we support hosting the Germans. He is still under the delusion that we can get their business. My team lead started to say maybe and I just said, "No. No way!" He didn't want to hear that.
The second time was when he was asking all the team leads if they were ready for next week. The AS/400 person wasn't there and I just said, "She's good to go. She's always good to go." This is the truth. That's how she answers every week: "We're good to go." For some reason that really pissed him off and I got a hateful stare from him.
So now he and the PMICOUM get the bright idea that we need a process to find out why our satisfaction numbers are sliding. Of course this will entail more meetings. All God's chillun gotta have meetings. And while we're attending endless meetings we will not be able to find out the root cause of why our numbers are slipping.
I know the answer. It is so simple. Over the past two years the I/T support staff has been cut in half. I mentioned in another post about how my CDSMŽ actually bragged about it and my team lead got more pissed than I have ever seen him. You cut the staff in half and increase the number of useless meetings and productivity and timely support will drop.
We went to a new (No) Help (Whatsoever) Desk which has created new problems as calls were routed to the wrong teams and that took us longer to fix problems.
Our user groups have been cut. We have less users doing more work, putting in longer hours, fighting a new (No) Help (Whatsoever) Desk, and not getting timely problem resolution. They are tired and frustrated.
That's why our satisfaction numbers are going down.
But we need a process. I guess a team will be created. My ex-CDSMŽ will talk to his counterpart on the user side. The PMICOUM will create a project to create a process which will take people away from their primary job of end user support.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised our numbers are as high as they are. And I can guarantee the process that we put in place to try to determine why our numbers are going down will not even find the obvious reason for the decline.
I guess after the process is in place, we'll have to have a Quality Program.
I'm really gonna miss this shit when I retire.
Posted by denny at July 22, 2004 08:19 PM
Good Grief. And I thought my job was a Dilbert cartoon.
Posted by: beaker on July 22, 2004 09:55 PMHey, got the news today: We're being reorganized!
Talked to a friend in another office about it. She said, "We're so pissed off! We have the 'When will we file for bankruptcy?' pool going, but we completely forgot to start a 'When will we be reorganized?' pool!"
This sounds like the shit we're going through with "Process Centering" and Six Smegma. There's also a week of training we ALL have to take called DFSS (Dumb Fucking Stupid Shit). Top it all off with an ISO audit and you've got the makings of a serious productivity drop.
Posted by: Ralph Gizzip on July 22, 2004 10:46 PMAccidentally discovered the secret to good meetings several years ago. A screw-up left the conference room double-booked, and nothing else was available, and all the key people were present, so we went ahead and held the meeting in the hall, standing up. Hit the critical points, got the necessary signatures, and went back to work. Elapsed time - less than 10 minutes. Sadly, have not been able to figure out out to trick the system into routinely double-booking the conference rooms.
Posted by: Glenmore on July 23, 2004 12:09 AMThat (No) Help Desk - it wouldn't happen to be located in India next to Dell's, would it??
Posted by: GOC in Winston Salem on July 23, 2004 03:39 AMWhy don't you write all that up in an inter-office memo and CC everyone who makes more money than you do and see what happens.
Put your department's name and use only your initials. Or "anonymous" or whatever.
I have found in my years of working for Corporate America that the middle managers often have slightly more of a clue than upper management as to what is really going on in the company.
The Suits read spreadsheets and reports with pie charts and projections, they RARELY ever "get their hands dirty" on the floor where the real work is done - so they are not only unaware of what it takes to do the job, but what kind of issues the job has on the *floor*.
Also the meetings in management NEVER have a representative from the floor (Labor, the Working Man), to vent his issues with the way things are so the managers never ever know there are problems until someone goes Postal or up and quits, after changing all the passwords on their department's computers or stealing tools/supplies/equipment.
But hey, what do I know. I am a wage slave, I don't have an MBA and have never fully ran a business on my own of any size.
Posted by: Neo on July 23, 2004 12:19 PMSounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of meetings in bureaucratic organizations.
Meetings are tribal-cultural events, not business-transactional events.
The meeting is the bureaucratic equivalent of going to church. The agenda is, essentially, the order of worship.
The person presiding is the minister or priest.
The PowerPoint presentation is the vocal number by the choir & organ.
You can look around the room & see who showed up dutifully & who didn't. During the meeting, you can see who's participating reverently & who isn't.
It makes no difference whether any business is accomplished. That's not what the meeting is for.
You'd get more done if you stayed in your cubicle & worked? Mox nix -- just as it doesn't matter that going to church takes you away from your household chores.
What matters is the loyalty & orthodoxy of the parishioners, the regularity & familiarity of the ritual, the reinforcement of organizational conformity.
Pax vobiscum.
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.
Posted by: Alan Cole on July 23, 2004 01:08 PMRalph - 6 sigma. Ewwww! We had to do that bullshit 10 years ago. I hope you don't have to scope a process.
GOC in Winston Salem - Nope. Our (No) Help (Whatsover) Desk that front ends my group's support team is in the same building as we are.
Neo - In TCIDNN's bureaucracy that wouldn't work. I'm probably gonna retire next year so I just do the meeting bullshit and use it for blogging fodder.
Alan - I think you've stumbled on sumpin' here.
Posted by: Denny Wilson on July 23, 2004 01:29 PMStumbled?
Shucks, I was in the Official U.S. Bureaucracy for 34-some years.
Went to lots & lots of meetings -- office staff, bureau staff, assistant secretary staff, departmental staff, PPBS, ZBB, MBO, etc.
(Those work out to bureaucratic flavors roughly equivalent to Congregationalist, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, etc.)
-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.
Posted by: Alan Cole on July 23, 2004 01:39 PMAlan - I'm sorry about "stumbled". Obviously you were in a much more stifling bureaucracy than I. Congratulations for surviving it.
Posted by: Denny Wilson on July 23, 2004 02:18 PMYour "meeting experience" reminded me of one of mine. Having worked for at a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, the gub-ment required monthly safety meetings which all Dept. Heads were required to attend. Our newly hired DM (Dumb Shmuck) Engineer, who had pull in the front office, showed up to conduct his first one and showed a training film entitled "How To Prevent Roof Falls in Mines". This may be the epitome of wasted time. I retired shortly thereafter, and entered the ministry. (Seriously!)
Posted by: Rev .Nick on July 23, 2004 03:01 PMAgendas are the most important friggin part of a meeting.
Posted by: Susan on July 23, 2004 05:26 PMGlenmore:
Back when I worked for 'em, the Air Force did just what you described. It was called the "Morning Stand-Up." Where I work now, the high-level morning briefing is conducted in a room with nice, comfy chairs.
Posted by: F451 on July 23, 2004 10:38 PMGrouchy Old Cripple, Inc.
Internal Memo
To: All Department Heads, Chief Supervisiors, Assistant Chief Supervisors, Supervisors, Assistant Supervisors, Supervisor Apprentices and Supervisor Interns.
Subject: Meetings
Be advised that it has come to the attention of the Quality Utilization Advancement Control Keepers that several inter-departmental meetings have failed to maintain adequate QUACK records and have also failed for forward meeting agendas, minutes and attendance logs to the QUACK TEAM.
Per G.O.C. S.O.P 1511.21.21.47-(d) subsection (2a), this lack of compliance must be corrected at once.
You are hereby directed to meet at Conference Room 18-A in order to address this recurring problem. Be prepared to present individual Power Point presentations in regards to your department's QUACK compliance and your plans to improve said compliance to meet or exceed your departmental and individual QUACK goals.
Attendance is mantatory.
Regards,
Heywood Jablome
Administrative Adjuct For Leadership And Compliance.
(QUACK, AAFLAC)
cc:
Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Denny,
I think you should take over the writing of Bastard Operator From Hell.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Bob Jenkins on July 24, 2004 04:23 PM