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Tag Archives: meetings
How on earth does ANYTHING get done?
No wonder your average entrepreneur so loathes meetings. What was it Dave Berry said – organisations have meetings because they can’t actually masturbate? Either they are poorly conceived (death by powerpoint, serial-sage-on-the-stage) or else they are adequately conceived and then … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged ego-fodder, facilitation, facipulation, meetings
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“Only Connect”: Red Pepper on Syriza, feminism and movements. (But oh, the turgidity.)
There are two pieces in the latest worthy Red Pepper (1) worthy of note (so far – I’ve not finished it). They are both book reviews. “Syriza in Greece has been the most successful in mobilising popular and electoral support … Continue reading
Posted in activism, book review
Tagged Lynne Segal, meetings, movement-building, Red Pepper, social movements
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XX marks the spot? Female-dominated meetings
Yes there are exceptions (many exceptions), but as a gross generalisation – for reasons that may have to do with genetics, or socialisation (and I am not particularly interested because the ‘genetics’ argument is a red herring) – women are … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence, politics
Tagged avuncularitis, ego-fodder, meetings, movement-building, social movements
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Green Visions, Red Mist and Flouncer’s Remorse
Flouncer’s Remorse is a concept that is more fun to invent than to experience. Trust me on this. I let anger and frustration and powerlessness and disappointment cloud my judgement. I let those things give me “permission” to ask permission … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged facilitation, fll, flouncer's remorse, meetings, reflection
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The first rule of facilitation is you do NOT facipulate
I broke my “meetings” rule. To be fair to myself, my attendance at this particular meeting (where I was supposed to facilitate the afternoon session) pre-dates my “no more meetings” promise… I am not going to say much, cos I … Continue reading
I think the meetings lemon is squeezed dry…
Following the guest post from Mrs Towers, and the map-less compass, I got this from a wise friend I started a comment on Mrs T’s guest post and abandoned it – couldn’t find the right tone. In essence what I … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged meetings, movement-building, smugosphere
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Compass: pointless and going round in circles – I have no #timeforplanb
Attention Conservation Notice: I went to a meeting of a group that proclaims itself “Britain’s most influential politcal movement for real change.*” And guess what. It’s entrenched in the smugosphere and I was turned into ego-fodder. What. A. Surprise. The … Continue reading
Posted in activism, competence, politics
Tagged Compass, ego-fodder, irony police, meetings, movement-building, smugosphere, social movements
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Guest Post: “Spanking the meeting monkey” by Mrs Towers
I think I might need to start spanking Mr Towers, writes Mrs Towers. I have a new theory, you see. It suddenly occurred to me, as he described with relish the expected awfulness of the meeting he was about to … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, humour
Tagged masochism, meetings, Mrs Towers
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How to “crowd enforce” the two-sentence-question rule
Inspired by this article, a recent meat-space event and this awesome blog post about group dynamics in meetings and “collective incompetence”, I wrote this yesterday on a train journey. I am self-censoring bits, but they aren’t “mission critical”… Why the … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged meetings, movement-building, social movements
2 Comments
Acing “comment tennis”
I am done with “comment tennis.” What is comment tennis? It’s what happens at the end of a ‘normal’ panel discussion. The panellists (middle-class white men, mostly) have used up all their time (and more). The panellists haven’t really addressed … Continue reading →