Meetings

I have discovered that I like meetings...yes I know that makes me the type of person people hate, but hear me out. I do not like having a meeting just for the sake of meeting, as I think doing is most often better than just talking about doing (I say most often, as of course doing the wrong thing is not better). I am also all too familiar with meetings that drag on, or are so boring that even five minutes seems like five days in solitary confinement (not that I have such an experience).

What I like is having good meetings where I have something of substance to contribute, even though the love of meetings sort of goes against my nature. My Myers Briggs tends to be ENTP (it fluctuates a little), so I would say that the E makes meetings appealing, as I like to work and be around people. However, the P in me (ha ha...I know what you just thought) goes against meetings, as I just want to get right to a task, as I said I value doing. The MacGyver in me knows that planning is essential to success, but with the doing mentality my approach is "get it done and over with as quick as possible.) I'm a haptic learner, meaning I am a hands-on kind of guy, so I don't like reading the instruction manuals. This of course does produce some errors, but I accomplish tasks within an accepted tolerance very fast.

So why do I like meetings? It is hard to say. As I said, I like being around people and I like having my comments valued, but beyond that it could just be that I have finally started working on issues that are interesting to me.

My new office is undergoing a transformation and they are trying to apply an Agile project management framework, which has been quite interesting. My personality shys away from theories and business practices, because I feel that they slow down my doing something...I mean don't tell me about how to figure out how long it would take a monkey to fall from a tree after shooting it, just give me a gun and a stopwatch (don't worry, I love monkeys, and would never shoot one of those or any other cute furry creatures. )That said, I am starting to enjoy learning new frameworks for doing business, even though I think half of them are just plain common sense.


Perhaps my love of meetings stems from the fact that I will get to be Scrum Master for a new working group. My wife says the word "scrum" reminds her of the word "scrod," which is a baby cod fish. But since it is derived from my favorite sport of Rugby, I am quite pleased that I will be Master of Scrum!