Hello,
How is everyone's week? There is a lot of stuff in this week's material, so hope you are getting on ok! A few thoughts from me :)
VICAR OF DIBLEY CLIP
This is a clip of the first-ever episode of the Vicar of Dibley, maybe you have seen it before?! It is very English! 😬 As a bonus (slightly silly) exercise, please watch the clip then comment on this post with feedback on things you think they did well in the meeting and things they could have done better. The purpose of this exercise is to practise giving feedback on a meeting so that we can improve the ways we do things and help others improve also.
MEETING CHAT
Meetings are a topic I find oddly interesting. Many of us have a love / hate relationship with them. We feel sometimes that time spent in meetings is time spent away from doing ‘actual work’, but conversely, we can sometimes feel left out if we are not invited to certain meetings.
Here are some more resources about meetings you may find interesting:
- Freakonomics podcast. An interesting point discussed in this podcast is that we generally fill the time we have, so if we have an hour for a meeting it will generally take an hour!
- Stop the Meeting Madness article. Amongst many other things, this article discusses research that apparently meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years!
- Mitchell on meetings podcast - Three-part podcast from comedian David Mitchell about meetings that I enjoyed!
What are your top meeting tips? Please comment below.
PMWC DOCUMENTS
Does anyone think they might start using the trackers or any other PMWC documents? Or perhaps you have a different tool that you like that you could share with the group?
LIVE SESSION CHATS
I’m looking forward to having some interesting discussions with you in the live session this week and sharing some ideas. Here are some of the things we will be working on and chatting about:
- How do you name and organise documents in your workplace? What do you think of the WildTeam naming recommendations?
- Let’s all share some meeting tips with the group! How do we keep meetings productive, and not a waste of time?
- In small groups, we will practise holding a meeting to plan the world’s best party!
- What are advantages and disadvantages to using the project tracker?
If you have any questions please get in touch.
Hope you are all well.
Mavuto 🦆🐝🦋🐌🐞
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Hi Mavuto,
Good to see a vital topic covered here with few examples. BTW, I love Vicar of Dibbly......
In my past work, meetings were never very productive, most of it could have been said in an email or ideally in person/ or for the department in charge. My current role as Volunteer Trustee and Funding Corordinator, I find meeeting are essential as we have to depend on our CEO to direct us what we need next etc.
My top tips- Keep them short, keep them to the point and add an element of fun/ engegement.
The tracker system needs to be implements in our charity, and I hope it will be accepted.
Many thanks for the article here and good to think of ways to improve our everyday tasks.
All the best,
Sushma
I think we are doing one of the classroom exercises here?
A problem I have faced trying to complete a document in the past:
1. Not having a standardised template to use
2. Not being kept up to date by PMO/project support regarding what template version to use
3. Templates changing mid-project, with PMO/project support insisting we use them, meaning whole documents need producing again, a very unproductive use of a PM's time
4. Getting sign off of a document from the right people in a timely manner
5. Finding other people have updated a document when it is not their responsibility, causing confusion and boundary issues
6. Having too many documents to produce, when companies care more about documents and process than they do about delivery. A smaller subset of key documents would be more appropriate.
Hi @Mavuto Banda,
Posting here as I thought this may be affecting others too; I don't seem to have permission to access the document review tracker link to do the 3rd admin processes exercise: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1hlbKiAVbxZaHBF6bA7Izm-fJfwgS6GsO3nS2U9SsHE0/edit
I couldn't access the document tracker either
I'm having the same issue
Hi @Tom Yes, based on experience from the last cohort, I thought of discussing it in the live session before people go and do the exercise!
See you in 20 minutes!
My response to the project exercise. A problem I've had completing documents in the past included:
- Multiple reports covering the same or overlapping status updates.
- Too many documents to update, which have minimal impact on the project.
- Lack of owners for specific documentation.
"Post here examples of problems you have faced trying to complete a document in the past"
- Having multiple people make revisions on different versions and then putting them all together.
Although I managed to pull this off, given the editing and time I had, I realized it will need streamlining and proper planning going forward.