Two more meetings

First meeting was a general staff meeting. Mostly information or taking a survey on ICT habits. This is ok as long as they don't call it professional development. I prefer the term, Professional Information. Part of the meeting included a short session on the on-going Dress Code development. Of all the processes going on at work, this is the best managed one. It has been on the go for about two years and we are now at the stage where dress amongst the staff - especially on formal occasions - has improved significantly. Almost to the point where I feel like a slob.
Anyway, todays process included a set of recommendations by the Consultative Committee sub-group on Dress Code. I won't go into the details but we use DeBono green, yellow and black hats to analyse the code. Each group discussed it and then some of the feedback was presented to the big group. The whole feedback will be presented to the committee for further refinement. Pretty superficial but at least we did it in groups which meant many people had a chance to have a say in the process.
Second meeting was a consultative forum. Shoddy start with half the group going one way and the other half going somewhere else. Eventually the two groups met but there were no items on the Agenda! So, let's make one up! No process agreed to .Some discussion on why the forum has such poor attendance - I think it is obvious. Poorly run session dominated by a few opinionated old farts. Whew! Hope this never gets out. Although THIS meeting was better, we still had situations where individuals talked over each other, determined to get their point across; a lack of clear process when discussing ideas or making opinions evident.
A good thing though is that they recognised this and attempted to run the meeting properly with acknowledgment of the speakers, people taking turns, a proper proposal, a somewhat lame attempt to get discussion on the proposal, an "Enough discussion, let's vote" comment from the chairperson and then a vote.