8 ms·
First, I find it really bad on an org’s part to throw people into meetings like this that requires context and some prior knowledge without prepping them. I ass
by quartesixte 4y ago
First, I find it really bad on an org’s part to throw people into meetings like this that requires context and some prior knowledge without prepping them. I assume from your post that you are in an engineering role of somesort. I would ask for some training or perhaps a brief prep session on your company’s business side. Get lunch with someone in sales and ask tons of questions. Imagine if someone without any knowledge of front-end dev got thrown into a technical standup? Same thing is happening here.
That being said, one tip for meetings like this is to not get too hung up on the exact details in the moment and just soak it all in.
>Meanwhile I'm there wondering who is this [Robert Smith] of the [communications department]? What is the [transformation strategy] and why does it need a [quarterly review]?
Like this should happen AFTER the meeting. In the moment, your brain should trying to follow the flow of narrative:
“Someone did a thing to accomplish a goal and it seems like people are happy/sad/angry/frustrated/etc. about it. These people say this. These other people say that. I don’t know who that someone is, or what that goal was, but people seem pretty opinionated and seeing how everyone got thrown in here I guess it’s important. After this meeting I should go talk to Bob because Bob seems to have a lot of insight into this, seemed pretty level headed about the whole thing, and is a nice guy who answers people’s questions. I can utilize him to find out more.”
You will still feel lost, but you will at least walk away having a good idea of generally what happened and how people felt about it.
The other key to meetings like this is to not take every term at its absolute denotative value. Words will be thrown around that are suggestive of some general idea that is specific but pretty loose about the exactness of the term (“omnichannel strategy” for example. Complete goggbledegook.)