It grabbed my attention because it’s something I hear quite often, often in combination with the other, more obvious, “complaint” about working long hours.
And yes, the word complaint is in quotes because we all know that when we mention the hours or the back-to-back meetings, we complain about it, but we are really bragging about how busy we are for one simple reason. Busy people are in demand, they are important.
But, are they really?
I agree, I have noticed that people do seem to be more aware of when someone else is trying to talk and how they might have interrupted or stepped over them. We absolutely should make time for just socializing. One of my biggest pet peeves about the argument that remote workers just don’t connect as a team and collaborate is that it is possible if you simply intentionally create the space for it. We should trust our employees enough to multitask during the parts of meetings that aren’t really relevant to them, and by all means, we should consider having fewer meetings.
Yesterday I attended a meeting that lasted 3 minutes.
At the time I was happy to have not wasted any more time in a meeting than was absolutely necessary and get 27 minutes back of my day.
So, good for us for not wasting time and filling the half-hour time slot.
On the other hand, if ever there was a meeting that could have been an email, this was it.
This is something that I’m afraid the legal and technology industries just haven’t figured out yet. Think about it. “In the article “Bring Back the 40-Hour Work Week”, Sara Robinson explains that working a 60-hour week does not get you 20 additional hours of productivity. The numbers are probably closer to 25-30 percent more work…
Bob makes some good points in response the Lisa Bodell’s keynote from last week’s ILTA conference. I highly suggest you go read his column. Bodell was a good speaker and an inspiring one. But I felt her message of organizational change failed to take into account one major factor: We’re talking about the legal profession…