^^ Agreed. You put the agenda together, so you remember your shit. You don’t get to say “I know it’s my job, but can everyone please make sure I do it right?” No. Make a reminder for yourself and move on.
Please don’t be passive aggressive. Ugh. I agree with letting it go this time, but next time, if there is a next time, use tdn’s wording. It is perfect.
This is exactly what I would consider to be the normal procedure.
I’m a little confused about the whole problem here. You have a meeting each Wednesday. At some point it is your turn to do the agenda for the next Wednesday meeting. I assume things come up between each meeting that need to be added to the agenda. If that is not the case and it is just a “review last meeting notes, review budget, etc.” than that can be handled by an automated e-mail and not someone who gets paid to do a job. Why is this item any different than any other item to be added to the agenda? I would think the Monday e-mail is just the reminder that if anyone forgot to notify you earlier to get it in now before it is too late.
Maybe I’m missing something, but my business isn’t so static that you can just have one agenda that fits all weeks and then just add a few “exceptions” each Monday.
I’d agree to put it on the agenda that gets sent on Monday, and tell Melanie to check the agenda, and remind me if I made a mistake. It’s a bit cheesy to reply that you will send out an email that ignores what she just said to you, and she can go ahead and tell it to you again, in response to the email.
I do occasionally ask people who IM me issues to send them in an email, mostly to establish an email chain that will be forwarded to various interested parties.
You can also send yourself an email titled “MELANIE’S AGENDA ITEM DO NOT FORGET TO ADD IT!!1!1!!!eleven!”
Was about to post the same thing that ThelmaLou suggested.
I don’t think it’s reasonable of you to expect that people remind you of something on a specific date and/or time. People get busy, things come up, things get forgotten. Have a “tentative agenda” ready to fill in whenever your turn to host the meeting comes up, and then you can immediately add to it whatever anyone tells you, at any time, via any medium.
I don’t mean that Melanie HAVE to e-mail him on Monday. I just would like it if Melanie, and everyone would e-mail important things and not IM. It’s just that easy to lose them on IM. If you e-mail it, then it becomes my responsibility and both of us can rest assured…IM is for casual quick asks.
Or to put it another way - you don’t want to be bothered to write it down so you remember, but you expect her to write it down so she’ll remember. You want her to do twice the work, essentially saying, “My time is more important than yours.” I really don’t think this is a reasonable expectation.
If you want everything at a specific time you should remind people of that every week until they start doing it. But if someone comes to you early even though you asked them not to, it really shouldn’t be that big of a deal to write it down.
I agree with MeanOldLady but at the same time, maybe the whole process of doing these meetings needs to be updated. We have weekly meetings because our industry has so many changes and we want to make sure we’re all on the same page. In the center of our group is a dry erase board where we write down all of our meeting agenda points and bring the board with us to the meeting. That way we know we’re not missing anything and everyone will have a visual reminder of what’s out there. The emails back and forth are more technologically advanced but they seem to be a step back from an obvious solution.
I understand the process, but I also understand her point. She’s clearing her to-do list and making sure her work gets done and included. She’s e-mailed you, now she’s done what she needs to do, and you’ve got a responsibility to do what you need to do. In far less time it took you to type this question, you could have easily gone into Outlook and added ‘update agenda with Melanie’s stuff’ as an item with a reminder. (although, for me, I’ll usually just grab my iPhone and ask Siri “remind me on Monday at noon to update the agenda with melanie’s stuff.”) Two seconds…done. Going through outlook is about 15 seconds.
Agreed.
I’m not sure why IM is somehow a second-class electronic communication medium in this case.
Presumably, you have a template for the email you send out Monday. Can’t you just pull it up and add the change right now? If not, then I’d suggest that you need to come up with another system for remembering things that have to be done in the future.
There’s nothing wrong with realizing (about yourself) that it’s hard to remember all the things you might have to do. The solution to this is to come up with a system (for yourself) to accomplish what you need to get done, not try to impose the particulars of your workflow on your colleagues.
I’m siding with “copy and paste the IM to email and move on with your day.” It took you more time to type that OP than it would have send the IM to your email, and you’re still wasting mental energy fixating on something that doesn’t matter at all.
Now, if it was something that became a pattern - where somebody was consistently sending you IM’s instead of emails despite repeated requests, then you would have an issue, but this kind of one-off thing, forget about it.
I don’t agree with this either. People should be able to communicate with her in whatever manner is convenient to them rather than some straitjacket concept of the “proper” way to send notice of a change.
I both agree and disagree. (How’s that for hedging my bets?)
You want to make other people’s jobs easier for them, but sometimes there are standand protocols that have to be followed. Otherwise it’s like herding kittens.
Everything would be solved if you just eliminated the goddammed meetings. What the heck needs to be talked about every single week that’s so important that it takes X number of people X amount of time away from whatever important mission your organization exists to accomplish? Rhetorical question(s).
What if it turns out
[spoiler]the OP is the President’s Chief of Staff???
*<maniacal laughter> *[/spoiler]
When you get a group with one person leaving a Post-It, one person leaving an IM, one person leaving an Email, one person leaving a Voice Mail, and one person stopping you in the hall when you’re going to take a piss, you need a process. Sending an Email is not filling out an Agenda Form in triplicate, leaving the white copy for the agenda setter, keeping the pink copy for yourself and sending the yellow copy to long term document storage. It’s sending an Email, it’s fairly quick and easy, no harder than an IM, and it gives the leader enough paper trail to do their jobs well.
We can be flexible enough to deal with people going their own way once in a while without giving up on the idea of having a standard way of doing things.
I just noticed something… you posted this on the same Monday that you were so concerned that you couldn’t remember it. I think you remembered (all the way from Friday to Monday) so I don’t think there is a problem.
Perfectly stated. Leaving it up to each person to communicate their inputs on how they feeeeeeeel at the moment is a waste of time. It’s just like if you’re trying to write a report with inputs from several different people, and each insist on using different fonts, spacing, some using bullet points and others using narratives, etc. Not working together on something means someone else has to fix all the errors when they could be doing something more useful.
But again, if this is a one-off problem, best to suck it up. If it is a recurring problem, raise the process issue with the group.
This made me laugh. IM and ‘while I am walking to the bathroom’ questions get asked of me all the time. Usually, they are simple one-off things and I answer them on the spot. If they require me to follow up in any way, I NEED the person to send me an email. Not only does it mean that I will remember, it means that it was important enough to the person to actually take the ten seconds to write it down.
In the OP’s shoes, I would probably start drafting the email I was sending on Monday and include Melanie’s item in the agenda right then and there. That way I can’t forget and she isn’t put out either.
That’s what I was trying to say. Agreed 100%.
Have you considered starting a SDMB thread to remind yourself to include Melanie’s action item? Oh wait…you did.