Friday, June 26, 2009

Art Imitates Life

During season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, Admiral Kane revealed her secret for swift, effective meetings: remove all the chairs. People don't like standing for long periods of time, and so no one was willing to prolong a meeting unnecessarily. 

I am tempted to implement this in my job. Sadly, I am not a meeting organizer. I am quite possibly the lowest rung of the authority ladder; in fact, I don't even get to sit around the table during the project management meetings (I get one of the peripheral chairs).

Last Thursday was my Day of Meetings: straight from 11:30 to 3pm. They are usually torture but this week, I thought they went very, very well. Very productive. Decisions made. Clarifications. 

(Note to person who suffered the embarrassment of having their cell phone go off during the meeting. You may not have noticed that I was not one of those people making a face nor doing a goofy chair dance because you'd set your ringtone to "Ice Ice Baby". This is because a few weeks earlier, I--a person who NEVER gets phone calls*--got a phone call during the project management meeting. And my ringtone is "Hate to Say I Told You So" by the Hives. And it's set really loud. So I empathize. Still, "Ice Ice Baby"?)

*Seriously, about 95% of my cellphone use is playing Sudoku, and about 4% is taking photos. I really don't use my cellphone as a "phone" much at all.

1 comment:

katze said...

We tried this technique at my place of employment. It doesn't work-- we just ended up standing for over an hour, then someone went and got chairs from another conference room.