All Hands
On Friday I went to my first "All Hands Meeting" at work. (That's large company talk for a meeting of a large organization where everyone is invited/required to come.)
There must be about two hundred people in my organization so we were in the auditorium in one of the other buildings. I knew a lot of the technical groups were in my organization but I was surprised to see the Project Management Office people there too. Everyone was relaxed and talkative.
This was the yearly meeting about goals. My company's philosophy is that everyone in the company should know what the company's goals are and everyone's personal goals should connect with the larger goals. It took me about four months to get my head around this but now I understand how it's done.
The first step every year is having a meeting where the higher-ups present their goals, which are, of course, in line with the top goals of the company. At the All Hands meeting the Senior Vice President/CTO of our company (which is a big chunk of the larger corporation) told us about last years accomplishments and this year's goals. He's pretty entertaining and, like everyone here, is very open about the good and bad things that go on at the company. He gave direct answers to blunt questions, some of which were a bit surprising (or at least different than "common knowledge.")
Then the organization director did his thing, then the directors from the next level down. They all talked about whether we made last year's goals and then showed their organization's goals--my organization's goals.
The funny thing is that my manager required all of us to finish our personal goals by the end of last month since it seemed like this All Hands meeting was never going to happen. My goals are, in fact, the same as my peer's goals which she used last year.
There were some criticisms of the meeting from the people in my small group. The goal about staff development was too vague for everyone, there were a bunch of slides that you couldn't read and we didn't have handouts, and, worst of all, we ran out of time before they announced the winners of the peer awards so they didn't announce them and just sent an email later.
Oh well, for an All Hands meeting it wasn't tooo bad. Next year, they probably won't make those mistakes again. If I'm there, I'll let you know.
There must be about two hundred people in my organization so we were in the auditorium in one of the other buildings. I knew a lot of the technical groups were in my organization but I was surprised to see the Project Management Office people there too. Everyone was relaxed and talkative.
This was the yearly meeting about goals. My company's philosophy is that everyone in the company should know what the company's goals are and everyone's personal goals should connect with the larger goals. It took me about four months to get my head around this but now I understand how it's done.
The first step every year is having a meeting where the higher-ups present their goals, which are, of course, in line with the top goals of the company. At the All Hands meeting the Senior Vice President/CTO of our company (which is a big chunk of the larger corporation) told us about last years accomplishments and this year's goals. He's pretty entertaining and, like everyone here, is very open about the good and bad things that go on at the company. He gave direct answers to blunt questions, some of which were a bit surprising (or at least different than "common knowledge.")
Then the organization director did his thing, then the directors from the next level down. They all talked about whether we made last year's goals and then showed their organization's goals--my organization's goals.
The funny thing is that my manager required all of us to finish our personal goals by the end of last month since it seemed like this All Hands meeting was never going to happen. My goals are, in fact, the same as my peer's goals which she used last year.
There were some criticisms of the meeting from the people in my small group. The goal about staff development was too vague for everyone, there were a bunch of slides that you couldn't read and we didn't have handouts, and, worst of all, we ran out of time before they announced the winners of the peer awards so they didn't announce them and just sent an email later.
Oh well, for an All Hands meeting it wasn't tooo bad. Next year, they probably won't make those mistakes again. If I'm there, I'll let you know.
posted by changingagain at 7:55 PM
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