Meetings and time-lines in corporate world…

This writing is to show a glimpse on how we are managing our time-lines in our day to day work environment.

Meeting organizer (MO) is sending out a mail to attendees (AT) stating the meeting date and time and he is going to give a PDF presentation on the conference room TV monitor which is connected in the net word

Say for example; Date = any date (Date is not important for this story) 
Time = 10.30 AM to 11.30 AM

Here comes the date when the meeting is scheduled and its 15 mins before the meeting start time.

Story begins from here once after everyone got the remainder on the desktop:

10.15 AM 
Everyone will snooze it for 5 mins before start of the meeting. 
MO: Its only 10.15 we will wait let the AT goes 1^st 
AT: Its only 10.15 let AT goes 1^st

10.25 AM 
Open the remainder read it fully then closes it and dismisses the reminder. 
MO: Still we have 5 mins let AT goes 1^st then we will go 
AT: Mo itself sitting in the desk what we are going to do in the meeting let MO goes fist and then we will go.

10.33 AM 
MO: Common guys, we have to be in the starting stage of the meeting but still we are here. Please hurry up we have to do it at any cost.

10.40 AM 
MO and AT are gathered in the meeting room. Ouch!!! How to connect the TV monitor into system, how to plug in the network cable..

One person from the meeting room is dialing the helpdesk person to help in connecting the monitor and network cable.

Mean time the topic for the meeting is opened in the room, by the time clock has crossed 10.45 AM.

One of the voice murmuring what the hell the helpdesk person is doing we called him 5 mins before and still he did not come it’s already 10.50; we have to complete the meeting today at any cost.

10.52 AM 
One voice from the door asking what I have to do, yes it’s from a helpdesk person. He understands the issue he took some time to search where the cables and somehow he connects the monitor cable and network cable. Now the heavy breath coming out from the helpdesk person and from the MO&AT, Oh god at last everything is perfectly set. Now the helpdesk person is moving out from the meeting room.

10.55 AM 
Sir, Tee/Coffee. The voice from the person who brings tea/coffee, (Happy moments from AT, at last we got coffee, a person from the group slightly raises his/her eyes to see MO without getting the attention of others, yes the same feeling like others came out from MO also)

Yes now the time is exactly 11.00 AM. And the meeting is just stepped into the next level after introduction stage, lots of conversations, doubts, debates, murmuring, laughing, writing, oh my god the meeting is going very well as expected.

Now the villain for the meeting is getting introduced,

Excuse me… we have booked the room from 11.30 to 12.30, can you please look for some other place for your meeting, its urgent we are already late by 5 mins (late entry from another team) and we have to log into a call immediately

Some from the meeting room now turns up their wrist and some taking out their mobiles to check the time, oh its bad, already we crossed 11.35 AM.

MO to AT: Ok we will continue further by opening the mail forum. I will share the PDF, please spare some time to read the PDF and put everything in the mail forum to discuss.

AT: Great stuff we had in the meeting, How come these guys know about our important meeting? Always they are here to disturb our meetings. We should speak with the management to get separate meeting room.

What is our learning from the above story? 
Only below 3 flashed on my mind. If any of are not agreeing this, please do share your views on the story as well as in the learning’s.

1.     Plan your time before you start anything. Time is precious

2.     Organize your preliminary works before start of the occasions

3.     Take the ownership, don’t wait for “other to start first”