I’ve reached the summit. Or rather a summit. The top of a greasy pole (albeit a fairly small one). I’ve become chair of a Health and Wellbeing Board sub-committee on mental health. You could spin it pretty well on a CV (if I was writing
V – so what’s new this month? A – the thing that struck me was the number of meetings that were a waste of time or not as effective as they could be. M – Oh same old, same old. If only the rest of
V – so how is the mental health work going? We haven’t heard about that for a while. A – Well, OK. Perhaps not as much happening across the strands of work as I’d ideally like and maybe the statutory bodies doing things themselves,
V – so anything you want to report on this month? A – yes, it’s come out of the mental health work, but it’s more about the nature of groups than mental health issues as such. V – OK, so where did it come from?
V – if I remember correctly, you should have had the presentation by now to the Health and Wellbeing Board that your mental health group was working towards? A – Yes, indeed, we have. V – and how did it go? M – presumably not
Making meetings effective could be a life and death issue. Partnership working often requires joint delivery of something – whether a strategy, programme of action, event or whatever. But producing something jointly is a challenge. That’s one of the reasons why in organisations tasks are
I was struck last week by how two different meetings failed to be as effective as they might have been, and how it was simple, and well-known advice that could have improved them. Both suffered from many of the classic problems with meetings. People turned