Meaningless Meetings

Was invited and had to attend another meaningless meeting today at work. The thing that is really frustrating is that I am only there 12 hours a week now, so that half hour really bites into my productive time. I am not against meetings. I just wish we weren’t invited to every single meeting that MIGHT someday produce a request for an enhancement to our automated forms that we develop. Key word here being “Might”.

Today’s meeting was comprised of a few business owners of different projects. Business Owner A wanted to convince Business Owners B and C to be on board with the creation of a new customer account setup process. My key role at my job is the development and maintenance of automated forms. Keeping in mind that there isn’t a new process yet nor do we have any say in whether there should be a new process, why my team had to be involved this early in the process is beyond me. But we nonetheless were invited. After the first 5 minutes of the meeting, my mind was beginning to wander. I was no longer paying close attention, as it was obvious that they didn’t even know if they wanted a new process or if it would be needed. No new process = no change needed on the forms. Also, no decision on a new process = no change on the forms.

In a perfect world, it would be nice if Business Owners would decide what they want and THEN invite us to their meetings if they feel we need to be involved. It would be a much better use of our time. And I would be more than happy to attend meetings where their decisions are already made and they would just like our input as to the best way to implement said change on the forms.

In this case, even if they ever did decide that they do want a change, from what I am hearing, I am pretty sure it would only entail adding one simple field to one or two forms. A simple change that does not require endless meetings, or even one meeting for us at all. I would be happy with a Service Desk ticket saying, “Please add a field called X on Form Y. Make it required in situation Z.” The End.