The Useless Meeting Wack Jobs

$$$$$exyGal writes "Have you ever attended a useless meeting? Are you the wack job who always ask the same (or random) question during an all hands with the hope that simply by asking, you're going to change something? Rands in Repose points out the difference between an informational meeting and a conflict resolution meeting."

Comments

Re:My question

[imadork]

I usually ask "Why are we having this meeting? No. Really". It never gets answered satisfactorily. Am I asking anything wrong??

There's nothing wrong with that, unless you want to get promoted into management. Then I think your performance will be evaluated on the number of useless meetings you go to (and run).

I get invited to a ton of meetings every week, but always ask the person calling it if I really need to go. More than half the time, I was only invited because I was on the project distribution list!

Keep Your Soldiers Informed

[Slider451]

I like your military reference. To add:

Straight from the U.S. Army leadership handbook, FM 22-100:

Keep Your Soldiers Informed

Knowing 'why' you're taking this hill instead of that hill will put a stop a lot of dumb questions and increase trust in both directions. Sometimes there's no time to inform everybody. But if you've generally done a good job of rumor-control your employees will give you the benefit of the doubt when you can't.