Let’s Have an Offsite!

Have you been a victim of the dreaded offsite?   What’s an offsite you say, well if you have to ask, you have not been to one and probably don’t work in the office of a large corporation.

For the uninformed, an offsite is where you go with a group of fellow workers, live there for a day or more, eat together, play together, do all kinds of team activities and most likely accomplish little.  

In other words, it is just like a meeting but with ambiance.  On the plus side you probably get free drinks and to see your fellow workers in more of a, shall we say, realistic environment.

If you want to be sure you are at a bonifide offsite, here is what to look for.  A room with flip charts, lots of sticky note pads most of which will end up on the flip chart or on the walls or on the flip chart pages which have previously been stuck to the walls.  There will be several rolls of masking tape, water and handouts… all of which will weigh three to four pounds and which you must diligently carry away from the meeting before tossing them.

There will be one or more expert speakers, on occasion these may be PhDs who are there to give you some kind of a test so that you too can learn about your quirky personality already abhorred by your fellow attendees.

You will in all likelihood gain three to five pounds at an offsite because of the prevalence of snacks, big lunches and dinners and mindless boredom for eight hours a day.  You may be tempted to throw paper airplanes or even an occasional spitball, resist such efforts.  The familiarity that is generated at the offsite won’t last and your colleagues have long memories.   The only thing worse than a spitball in the meeting room is getting drunk at the bar and telling your associates what you really think, even the PhD (who has probably already gone home)  is not going to help you out of that one.

If the co-worker sitting across from you has his laptop on the table, ask him to turn up the sound so you too can hear the music.

The meeting will likely be “casual” and in that way you may learn more about the lifestyle of people than you ever wanted to know.  Somehow casual at an offsite takes on new meaning, especially at the bar.

If you participate in one of those team building exercises hope to God that the person behind you who is supposed to catch you as you faithfully fall backward is not the same person who you reported for stealing pencils and coffee packets the week before.

When you are asked to align yourselves into small groups for a breakout session it is time to hit the restroom, take an important call or busily leave the room with the Blackberry ® buzzing in hand (arrange for the appropriate notification from an associate for whom you later return the favor).  Never, never volunteer to be the person who “reports out” when the breakout session is finished, that is unless you like taking full responsibility for the five other people who now are in a position to disavow everything you report as the teams conclusions on a subject that no one on the team had any clue about in the first place.

Be mindful of the parking lot, no, no that’s not where you left your car.  The parking lot is the place where the really good ideas (and stuff nobody wants to deal with) go to die, something like the elephant graveyard.  The parking lot is the flip chart in the corner of the room where the following are written:

• A really dumb idea that is placed there to avoid embarrassing the idea giver
• Ideas that are completely and utterly not understood but that fact is not admitted to by anyone in the room
• Good ideas that will be lost in the wind when the page of the flip chart is torn off (with an interim stop taped on the wall). 

There is a newer trend these days which involves rating something where your opinion is asked and the results are tabulated without any semblance of confidentiality by placing a brightly colored dot on a line drawn on a page from the flip chart now taped to the wall.  “Where do you believe our organization lies today in terms of respecting diversity?”  Diversity, I thought this was a budget meeting?

Finally, you may be confronted with an “evening session.”  Personally I am a morning person so I have no memories of any past evening sessions to share, but I have to think that the evening session when most people are full of dinner, want to call their families or in rare cases want to hit the fitness center are at least as productive as the previous eight hours.

Game room anyone?

May 5, 2008

Safety in Numbers

Out of My Way, Get Your Own Team

In the workplace this means one thing, another dreaded team.  No matter how you slice it, it also means that no one is accountable for any one thing and thus no one can get blamed.  It also means that getting something done will take twice as long as necessary.  How important is this safety net, well if you have been on a job interview recently, you were no doubt asked to “describe the most recent team in which you participated and what was accomplished.”  Of course, this will require a bold faced lie with regard to the accomplishment.  If you are lucky, you will be asked directly, “Are you a team player?”   There you have a better chance of not telling a lie, especially if you happen to play on a weekend softball team.

I am listening to a team conference call at the moment.  It has been going on for 15 minutes and it was just concluded that an answer to a previously asked question, was not, in fact an answer to the question asked.  People are talking around, through and past others, "points" are rehased and revisited, topics are changed on the turn of a dime.  Who's on first?  Listen closely to this team and you will hear every current buzzword possible..that makes people feel good.

Actually it appears that most of the team on the call is either not paying attention, has no clue why they are on the call or is checking their Blackberry.  Why are they on the call you may ask?  Go ahead and ask, that is like asking directions to the Holy Grail.  A half hour now wasted and growing rapidly, who cares we are being productive.  "I don't have time to do things, like twice."  Really, I assume the rest of the team does have all that extra time.

And we are worried about global warming?

So if you want to play it safe, be a team player at work, there is safety in numbers.

The Bomb Thrower

No, we are not discussing a terrorist although if you are subjected to this strategy you may in fact feel like a target.

The office bomb thrower is the person who insists on sitting back during a discussion or throughout a project and then at some point long into the process says with authority, “ you know, so and so doesn’t agree with this strategy,” or why didn’t’ you do this or that,” “what are you planning to do about…” or my very favorite generally thrown when you are 99.999999% done with the work, “we need to go back to the COMMITTEE and confirm this is a go.”

Hey, why didn’t you say something sooner?

Well, because if they did, they couldn’t attract attention or exert their authority or make you feel like a loser.  The bomb thrower is typically a leader who isn’t, a person who rather than help a team along the way delights in being right rather than being, well a leader.  This is a person who knows well, but rarely expresses the proverbial “I told you so!”

The bomb thrower is a gotcha kind of person whose main pleasure in life is basking in his self-defined supremacy.

No doubt you have experienced the thrower and been frustrated by her, not being sure which direction to take or for that matter whether the comment made with such forceful enthusiasm is totally accurate, you can’t take a chance so it is three steps backward and then you are under the gun because the “project plan” is screwed up…and if you are really lucky the consultant hired to “help” you put the darn thing together will blame you.

A defensive strategy to thwart the aggressor is difficult.  I have tried garlic and that doesn’t seem to work (or lower cholesterol).  Locking the meeting room door may help, but only temporarily as occasionally someone will have to leave to pee.  I prefer an anti communication strategy myself.  That is, don’t tell nobody nothin until it is too late to do anything about it.  That way your project may not be perfect, but it will get done, you know the old 80/20 rule (better luck with 90/10 though).

Of course, the bomb thrower will have a field day after the fact and you will be object of scorn, criticism and perhaps sideline your career, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing that for just a short time you were a real leader.

December 28, 2007