We had a group away day in January. Or rather, away days. A Tuesday and a Wednesday off-site. There were a bunch of good ideas that came from it. Even better, we left with the acknowledgement that none of it would mean anything if nothing was implemented, nothing changed. For me, that's left a sense of impending change sitting in the air for the better part of a month now. Yes there's a working group looking at exactly how to change some things, but it all feels ... very quiet.
The one thing that has noticeably appeared on my radar is the result of a fairly off-hand result I made at one of the session. Something along the lines of "if we're going to go massively over time in a meeting, give people the chance to ditch out of the meeting at the scheduled time". This wasn't even part of the discussion, it was now more me being tired and grumpy and being 2 hours and 25 minutes into a 2 hour session.
And the thing that is coming through is at the end of meetings "we're a few minutes over time, has anyone got anything else to talk about ... except oh, yes, Ben hates it when we ask that ha ha ha"
Queue the rolling of eyes on my part. It may not have been well communicated the first time, but I really need to figure out a way to communicate it now. The point is that randomly going over time with out an opportunity to ditch out is disrespectful of other peoples time.
I hate it when I go over time in a meeting and don't notice it.
I hate it when other people do it to me.
And I hate it when people are late when they get "stuck" in another meeting. Which of course is all of the people in the meeting being disrespectful of the person who's waiting in an empty room.