Timekeeping for Meetings

essaysbysean.blogspot.com
About this Essay

Some colleagues, who work with developmentally delayed clients, have been co-chairing large staff meetings with mixed results. Since I appreciate meetings, I have a written a piece to help them. I have focused on some concepts, with implications, as well as addressing the little-known fact that at times a chairman's mind may boggle.

The above introduction, linked to my discontinued website, is getting some hits these days, so I guess I should politely provide the entire piece:

TIMEKEEPING

for co-chairs of Do-it meetings

By Sean Crawford June 2009

"When hiking, the best way to keep from getting lost is to always stay found"

Concept: When chairing a meeting the way to keep from getting time-lost is to always stay found.

Implications:

1) It would help to always know (stay found) where you are... to have a sense of proportion, to always know how many minutes (and what meeting portion) have passed and how many minutes are left.

2) It would help to decide ahead of time how long each part of the meeting is (at least roughly) and what will be the time on the clock at each point.

3) To compensate for your brain getting boggled it would help to have a big clock facing right at you.

4) If you choose to stick up a "flip chart page" with the agenda on it then it might help your self confidence to pencil in the clock times alongside the agenda items.

Concept: The group is responsible for the group.

Implications:

1) As with supporting a client in a job, our mission ideally is to fade ourselves out (almost) completely as the group gets more mature about meetings.

2) Therefore we can feel more relaxed and less need to be controlling. (Sean: "Hey man, it's not my job to herd cats.")

3) If you decide to stick up a "flip chart page" agenda then it would help if the times are written alongside the agenda items in bold felt pen that can be seen from the back of the room.

4) It would help if the group "buys in" to the agenda times at the start of the meeting, then during the meeting the group self-control comes partly from their agreed on times (group responsibility) and not solely from you.

5) If you are constantly trying for "informed consent ... informed choices" by constantly reminding them of "time proportions" then the group will, secondly, get more mature at judging time, and, FIRSTLY, help to "peer pressure" the time-wasters.

6) The more you refer people to an impersonal clock or impersonal time on the agenda the less work for you, the less chance that someone will take your controlling them and interrupting them personally.

7) It would help if the timer reported to the entire responsible group in a clear loud voice.

Examples of a loud group timer:

Chair: "For the next agenda item we have agreed to ten minutes, from 1:00 to 1:10"

...(time passes) Shawna: "...and so that is what I think."

Timer: "Five minutes left."

Chair: "Thank you, Timer. Sean, I think you are next, did you have something to add?"

...(time passes, now Jane is talking) -so what I mean is, um,-"

Timer: "That's ten minutes."

Chair: "Thank you. Please finish up, Jane"

(Jane finishes)

Chair: We seem to be really excited and involved in this topic. We said to give it ten minutes, but, shall we go another five minutes longer? This would mean less time on, say, discussion of the last item."

Group: "yes, sure, you bet."

(time passes)

Timer: "That's it."

Chair: (If giving the group more responsibility) "We agreed on five minutes extra. We did so. Can we move on now?"

(If giving the group less responsibility) "Now we need to move on. We can write the topic in the "parking lot" and get to it later or next week if time permits. Now we are on to item X..."

Note: Last month I gave the group zero responsibility. One or more people got excited and wanted us to get onto something that was outside of our (realm) jurisdiction, something like wages. Me:

"Whoa! As chairman I must be autocratic and declare that we will not discuss this, nor will we discuss the reason we are not discussing it. If curious, you can ask the supervisor later. Right now we are moving on..." Note: The group took it well, and "autocratic " became someone's word of the day.

Question: Why did I begin with, "As chairman...? Answer: The group is responsible for the group, but I feel I have been delegated (by the group) to have special powers for the purpose of helping the group... I was not speaking "as Sean."

Regarding brain boggling:

It happens. Last month at one point I said calmly, "My brain just boggled. Kim, please take over." Then, turning to the group, I added, "Hey, that's why there's two of us." (I said this partly to help the group to learn more about meetings.)

Concept: Clients don't function when they are upset and neither should you. 

It seems to me that if any time you lose track of time, then that is a flashing sign that you are a teensy bit boggled, so STOP for a second, get "centered" and get back on track.

It seems to me that if both co-chairs are truly boggled, both at once, then probably the group is half boggled too; Either way, I think it is OK to say, (I'm making this up) "Let's take a minute of silence to all collect our thoughts, and choose our words, so we will each be able to contribute in the briefest possible way....Timer, please let us know when a minute is up. I realize a minute feels like forever, but it's only a minute, and we need the time..." (Then huddle with your co-chair and get centered)...

The point is to decide together before the meeting that you will STOP and pause or take a recess or something- you can't just "try to bravely carry on" if you are both really uncomfortable. 

(Sean: "Hey man, I can't carry on if I'm boggled; I'd rather try to herd cats.")

Regarding individuals wasting time:

Lorna has given us several tips, remember?, but here is one more-

If someone starts repeating herself for the third time in different words, then you may say, "Excuse me, but in the interest of time I must summarize. I hear you saying XY. Is that close enough?" "Yes, but-" "Then we must move on. Jane, I think you are next."

Note- I hope that in time the group will learn the skill of speaking concisely. (Definition: giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words) When I was working with walkie-talkies they encouraged us to "think before you speak" and they said it was perfectly fine to write it out on paper before you went on the air, if you needed to do so. We all caught on quickly.

Concluding remarks: 

Oh yes, best to do a cartoon of a car "parking lot" on the flip chart for the group at the beginning of the meeting. (To park topics to talk about later)

For this paper I have been a little wordy to give us all something in common to discuss. 

Needless to say, I encourage you to do-it in your own way. My focus is less on specific tricks and things, rather I focus on concepts to produce a relaxed tone.

Kim and I, in fact, do very little of the stuff in this paper: as I said, you can do-it in your own way.

Of Human Energy and Flying Robots

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

My word of the day is “energy.”

While Japan has switched off all its atomic energy plants and gone to fossil fuel this year, friends of Japan over here in Calgary enjoyed another energetic Otafest. The “ota” part is short for otaku, a Japanese word meaning living-in-your-mother’s-basement fan. Over here, though, the meaning’s not nearly so extreme. This weekend young people gathered to enjoy Japanese pop culture, especially animation and comics, or, anime and manga. (You don’t need to write these words in italics anymore)

The annual festival, totally put on by volunteers, is always held at the University of Calgary, on the Queen Victoria Day weekend. At one point, while I was sitting in the food court, a happy Asian family, one with a light easygoing energy, asked me, “What’s going on?” This while so many otaku in costumes were having lunch and passing back and forth. So I explained things, adding that, just as Japan has better animation than we do, over in Japan the housewives are watching South Korean TV dramas for being much better than theirs. At this the adults burst into laughter. Their poor boys had to be told that while yes, there was a huge dealer’s room that includes toys, you need an Otafest wristband to get in.

As usual, I attended mainly for the anime. Why? As with opera, I can get into feeling far more tragic emotion and laughter from anime than I would while watching Hollywood shows on the zombie-box. I said as much to a conventioneer my age, a bald fellow in a plaid shirt. He pointed out that a lot of the background inspiration was western opera, as well as western myths and religions. Indeed. The young people attending may never have heard of the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, but they know what they like. We both liked how we were old enough, i.e. rich, to buy anything we saw. That’s a nice thought, one that perked me up all weekend as I searched for DVD sets and stuff.

So many conventioneers looked so excited all the time. My heart went out to contrasting little groups of two or three —rarely three-- where everyone had somber faces. I wondered if they had grown up with a somber expression as their default, and if they had gravitated together because they had similar energy levels, from having similar pasts. “God bless the beasts and children.”

The only seminar I attended, about piloted Gundam giant flying robots, had a low energy level. The lone panelist, with a computer hooked to an overhead display screen, had ample resource material to explain his points, yet he apologized several times for not being more prepared. I guess he meant he had no really well planned lesson for us, but he was OK, and he surely had enough background knowledge. He also had knowledge of how to facilitate, as he knew when to say, “let’s move along,” when to ask for a show of hands, and when to ask for questions. If the energy never got very high, well, maybe it was the nature of the topic. The lesson I took away was to always have a second person, or more, on your panel, even if they have to admit right away, “I know nothing” about the topic. I’m serious: Because the comfortable energy sent between the two panelists, besides being reassuring to them, may then ignite others attending the panel to warm up too. And besides, the most powerful force in the universe is a determination not to let the other guy down: There would have been no apologizing about a lack of preparation. (Note: Someone said the audience was too diverse for the panelist. That sounds right, in which case a second panelist might have helped build bridges)

I don’t think anyone reacted to me as being old, except I was asked for directions a lot. For me, the festival was like being in a fairy tale, a land where, without any need for fearful warm-up, strangers who met could start talking right away. I wore no costume, no yuppie clothes or business suit, merely a T-shirt and jeans.

At one point I asked a lone girl about her school uniform costume, complete with armband. She burst forth at length about it, and how she was from a little private school. Truly, there can be a strange energy to experiencing a big party where you don’t know anyone. My advice: Unless you’re a hardened guy my age, try to drag a friend along. If you’re a woman my age, have no fear of standing out. Last year my curious English professor’s wife was well received by the young fans. In fact, come to think of it, contrary to nerd stereotypes, I guess there were even more young ladies at Otafest than young men.

Ah, nothing like a balance of genders to add energy. (At one point I overheard three girls sharing a phone-camera photo of a boy they knew in costume) As for my own energy, I noticed it was down this year, partly for some personal reasons, and partly because of a significant reduction in the number and type of anime offered… At least I patronized some young artists. –And hey, I already have all my new posters up on my refrigerator door! And I’m energized to have bought lots of stuff on sale, -yes!- enough to last me through the whole year. I’ll be back!

Sean Crawford

Back in the mundane world,

May 2012

Footnote:

~Of course we celebrate the birthday of our monarch, but we can’t be changing the date every time we get a new one, right? So Queen Victoria’s birthday stands in for whomever the current monarch is.

~On page 5 of google's otafest listings I found this collage teaser-intro to the Gundam panel I attended.