Meeting, + Meeting, + Discussion Meeting

First meeting: Big Biggie and his assistant arrive on time. Second Big Biggie doesn't show up, but nobody seems to care *:-) Big Biggie is professional, open, honest, and does a good job of bringing all of us closer to an understanding of what is going to happen to our organization. He takes questions and is able to answer all of them satisfactorily except those that have to do with specific configurations of the organization, which have not yet been signed off on by the Super Big Biggies and the legislature. I make a brief verbal preso in the form of a question outlining the need for those of us who are professionals and need to get on with our careers needing to know the number of days, weeks, or months before our new direction is known, so that we can either get off this train and get on another, or stay on this train as it pulls out of the station for a new journey. He gives a very precise date in the near future and promises us a bright, shiny, new & beautiful train to ride *:-)

Second meeting: Big Biggie and assistant leave. We are left alone with our own management and the professional facilitator. Required question asking is attempted, by sending the management out of the room and the choice to us is either to write our questions on sticky pages, which will then be read by the facilitator to management when they return, or to wait for management to return and to ask our questions verbally. I do neither, realizing that the un-indicted co-conspirator cannot be trusted and therefore I keep my questions to myself. However, after having broken up into 3 groups later, and again without management input until we reconvene, we are given 3 impact issues that we are to develop responses to about how they have affected us in view of the recent event of our CEO being jailed for embezzlement. A group speaker is chosen for each group to provide anonymity, and so I participate fully. Once reconvened, this generated substantial discussion and presentation, with management present, and at one point someone in the audience asks our group speaker for specifics on one of the impact statements, which happened to be one that I contributed. Our group speaker states that these are anonymous inputs but that if the person who generated the input chooses to expand and clarify on the topic, that is fine. I take the bait, and deliver an impassioned speech detailing the impact on our client base that the removal of our CEO has had, and this gets both nodding and verbal agreement from those who actually speak to our customers at levels below management. When I sit down the person next to me said it was a brilliant speech *:-) I was so full of emotion that I cannot, then or now, recall anything that I said *:-) This meeting went much longer than planned, and we were all exhausted after it ended.

Discussion Meeting: This is interesting. We have a person who, with his young family, is a refugee from the Katrina disaster, where he had a job as a programmer for a small company. He is a white middle-American from Iowa, with the normal baggage that brings with it. He prides himself on his self-perceived ability to be "in the know" about everything that goes on where we work, but in reality he just isn't in the loop to catch the haps. So...after the Second Meeting, he steps into my cube and asks if we can go somewhere to talk so he can get clarity on some of the things I said during the two meetings, and which others gave nodding or spoken agreement with. I said sure and off we went to my training room, where we closed the door and sat for very nearly a complete hour, while he grilled me on details and looked for holes in anything I had said. He didn't find any, and when our meeting ended, which was prompted by another employee wanting to meet with me privately for about the same thing, he said that he was astounded by how much he hadn't picked up on, and left shaking his head in amazement at what goes on around him that he doesn't pick up on. He also was greatful for the additional clarity.

Onward, into the unknown...