Just in case I haven’t mentioned it before, I love my job. The fact that I get to do what I do, and get paid for it, is a source of constant amazement to me. Not since I worked at DataBeam did I so look forward to going to work.

Another source of constant amazement to me is meetings. I mean, you know the litany, right?

I must not attend meetings. Meetings are the mind killer. Meetings are the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my meeting. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the wasted time has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

(With apologies to #perl and Frank Herbert)

The last several jobs I’ve been at, meetings were just that — an utter waste of the time of almost everyone there. Usually, the primary purpose of the meeting was the aggrandizement of the person who called the meeting.

Obviously, that isn’t always the case, since something usually got accomplished, however small and unimportant. But typically a meeting was a way to say in 2 hours what could have been said in a 2-line email message.

And so it is with great trepidation that I attended (I think) 4 meetings yesterday.

But the bizarro-world thing is that meetings at Asbury seem to actually accomplish something, and not to be 90% fluff. In fact, they seem to approach 0% fluff, and people seem to actually want to get stuff accomplished and then go away. So, in each case, we sat down, exchanged brief pleasantries, and then we made actual progress. Made decisions. Changed our little part of the world.

Now, I have to wonder, is this merely meetings that I go to, or is this something that is consistent across the organization, or is it simply unique to my little department, due to our fantastic management team? But it seems pretty consistent in meetings that I go to in all different departments, and all the way up and down the org chart. People seem genuinely interested in actually reaching consensus, and then moving on to something else. And not at all in the “oh, all right, let’s just get this over with” kind of way, but really reaching consensus.

I am, as I’m sure most of you are, very hesitant to write anything about work. The reasons for this are likely obvious. But I think it’s probably ok to make these brief observations without fear. It’s ok to say *good* things about your job, right Heather?