Re: Tech writers and engineers

[k k <turnleftatnowhere -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

>
> it's all too common
> to 
> be sitting in a seemingly endless meeting where
> every 
> technical issue imaginable is discussed even if 90%
> of 
> the attendees have no need to be involved, usually 
> because the meeting coordinator (if there even is
> one)
> isn't holding the meeting to an agenda that tells
> the
> attendees what will be discussed and when.  
> 

The ability and willingness to run good meetings are
rare and valuable things. All too often meetings are
called and chaired by people who have neither. 

At my last job the weekly department meetings normally
involved about 18 people. The manager was determined
to keep them short and focused so we had to follow a
strict procedure. We had to write down every topic we
wanted to talk about. Then, we looked around the table
and considered who else was affected by, or might have
a real interest in, each topic. A topic had to be
relevant to more than 1/3 of the people at the
meeting. If we figured it was relevant to fewer than
1/3, discussion of it was taken outside that meeting.
If anyone had doubts, the topic was brought up and we
had a quick poll. If fewer than 1/3 said it was
relevant to them, that topic went outside that
meeting. And the manager had no fear of cutting people
off and telling them to take a discussion offline if
it was dragging on too long. 





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