Administrative Note

[rolanni]

If you -- yes, you -- are on a committee that requires you and six other colleagues to review materials which have been collected into a dossier by the departmental secretary in accordance with Her Instructions?

...and you are planning on the other five members of the committee to Behave Like Adults and review the materials sometime before the actual morning of the meeting in which these materials are to be discussed?

...and four other colleagues have the same plan?

You Are Screwed.

Also?

This situation is in no way the fault of the departmental secretary.

Thank you.

Comments

.... departmental sec'y

[abwarwick.livejournal.com]

I am sorry. This happens all too often in my life.

My reactions have been various:
- to seeth (which only makes my blood pressure higher, so I try not to this too often)
- to grumble mightily (but only occasionally out loud -- but the blood pressure, again...)
- tp take a deep breath and try to console myself with the fact that I (and others) have acted like adults (not that this works very often)
- to remonstrate (gently and politely) with the offending person or persons; this rarely works, as the people who (in my life) often do this sort of thing are also the people who think they are too important to have to follow the sort of 'rules' and civilized behaviour that are usually expected of reasoning adults

Good luck!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

As the organizer of various meetings, there have been times when I wanted to impose a reading requirement for holding the meeting -- unless so many (or all) of the participants had read the materials, we would not hold the meeting. After all, why should I bother wasting everyone's time while we bring the people who didn't prepare for it up-to-date? Usually people tell me that if I do that, we'll never hold the meeting -- and I do want to move forward.

I have also found it worthwhile to plan for people to skip reading - and if I really want to make sure they know something, present it again at the start of the meeting. Reading prep materials, unfortunately, often seems to be considered as something that one does afterwards if needed, which makes the adjective "preparation" rather ironic.

No good answers, except to realize that most people have different agendas. Many of these do not include preparation and such trivialities. This means that the obsessive-compulsives among us (and we know who we are, don't we?) often are somewhat frustrated, and need to learn coping mechanisms including "just-in-time" briefings and orientations, KISS 3-point summaries, and whatnot.

Screaming and pounding your head against a wall, while sometimes unavoidable, are not terribly effective, in my experience. Just gives me a headache, and the next time, they do the same thing again. So, not effective, no matter how expressive.

Hang in there - in collecting and preparing the materials for their review, you have done your part. As the saying goes, you can fill the horse's manger with fodder, but you can't make them chew.

[seabat4.livejournal.com]

You can lead them to text, but you can't make them read...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

That's what we need -- if you don't read this text, it will be injected. Now that's an incentive!