On most sunny mornings, we all go to the beach to do Yoga, Tai Chi or Karate, a jump in the water and finally a cocoa/croissant (to get our Mayan/French Culinary Fusion fix) breakfast at The Wall* (on which the sun shines providing a warm surface for a toasty backside)
Monthly Archive for April, 2008
On most sunny mornings, we all go to the beach to do Yoga, Tai Chi or Karate, a jump in the water and finally a cocoa/croissant (to get our Mayan/French Culinary Fusion fix) breakfast at The Wall (on which the sun shines providing a warm surface for a toasty backside)
The thrilling conclusion to an epic five-part series. (See also parts one, two, three, and four.)
Part of the frustration with the stack of meeting notes from the past meeting was that I wasn’t clear how processing and recording them was helpful. Personally, I find it helpful to review projects and priorities regularly—helps keep me on track—but four weeks is too long a gap between reviews. So I started doing weekly reviews, which was very helpful to me. The problem is, if every project I was keeping track of was more-or-less “current” in my own system, what was I doing expending all this energy to keep it current in another system which I don’t use?
Moreover, what’s the point of having a regularly-scheduled meeting if we see each other all the time? Most of our most productive collaborations happen spontaneously anyway. Those are what I need to keep notes of—for myself. So why have a monthly meeting at all?
Papa was very helpful here. He helped me remember the true purpose behind the meeting:
Yeah, that’s right. There’s a reason I chose donuts for the masthead of this blog series.
So what was the solution to my dilemma? I fired myself from the job of Secretary. Kyle’s taking notes now. We’ve yet to see what his minutes will look like. Though I’m pretty sure they won’t have as much detail as mine—after all, I had to remind him several times that “You should be writing this down!”—I don’t care. I keep my own (very brief) notes now, and while the meetings are still kind of long, at least when it’s over, it’s over.
So we can enjoy our donuts.
Part four of an epic four-five-part series. (See also parts one, two, and three.)
Before I get into why I quit as AFM meeting secretary, it must be said that last year I stopped using the laptop to record notes from the meeting. One reason was that I lost the minutes due to software issues a couple times….
Don’t write the minutes in the [internal Abbott family] wiki! You’ll lose everything, like I just did.—From the minutes of the February 6th, 2007 AFM meeting
Not to mention the fact that, … Continue reading ‘Abbott Family Meeting Drama, Part 4′
Part three of an epic three-part series. (See also Part 1, Part 2.)
We left off in this series as I, Luke, had just seized the throne of “chairman of the board” at Abbott Family Music. My first order of business was to revamp the way the meeting was conducted. I was going to prepare a detailed agenda, like my friends over at the CBA do, and to make it complete I was going to ask for agenda items before the meeting. So, three days beforehand, I pulled the following card out of my tickler file and distributed it to my fellow Abbotts:
As it turns out, Kyle didn’t even read it. Why? The writing. It was so fancy, … Continue reading ‘Abbott Family Meeting Drama, Part 3′
Part two of an epic three-four-part series. (See also Part 1.)
Around the fall of 2007, inspired by a book/cult called Getting Things Done (GTD), I started making some big changes in the way I approached my work. For one thing, I started actually keeping track (on paper) of all the projects and commitments that I had ongoing. What a concept! (I’ll be writing more on GTD in particular in another post, I’m sure.)
The result of this, in terms of the business, was that I had a more complete picture of all the “open loops”, as they’re called in GTD; i.e., things that need attention…such as in a monthly meeting! So as you can imagine, the month after I began implementing my new organizational system, I came to the meeting with a stack of index cards a quarter-inch high, … Continue reading ‘Abbott Family Meeting Drama, Part 2′
Part one of an epic three-part series.
We’ve been holding regular Abbott Family Music meetings for close to two years now. Initially, I was de facto president/chairman, and Kyle was secretary. A few months later (back in August of 2006) we switched roles. Kyle’s reason for taking the presidency is a long story, but his acceptance speech was taken down in the minutes as this:
Thank you. Now, as my predecessor has noted, the windows of Abbott Family Music need to be opened. We must let in some new light, some fresh air, and dust the cobwebs off this old tired company.
My point in quoting him was not to exemplify Kyle’s penchant for tongue-in-cheek humor, but rather to illustrate the fact that I actually quoted him word-for-word. Which brings me to … Continue reading ‘Abbott Family Meeting Drama, Part 1′
We’re shooting some instructional videos to put on our website. Here’s Kyle taking a stab at a video:
Latest Comments
RSS