My mother used to be in charge of hiring proofreaders. Once she brought a stack of at least one hundred resumes with us on vacation. I said, “It’s going to take forever for you to go through that!” She said she just threw each one out when she came to any proofreading errors. I watched her do it. She was down to about a dozen in under fifteen minutes.
This is doubtless a good system and is in some ways the system I have been pushing for (with, as should be clear from the above, with limited success).
We certainly have been going, mainly at my behest, from “the outside in.” Unfortunately, some people–well, two at least on this committee–seem to believe it is their constitutional right to share their opinions about every candidate, even those, as I’ve mentioned, with across-the-board support or no support at all.
The other part that escapes some members of the committee (not all) is the numbers issue. (Which you allude to in your post.) Okay, if you feel very strongly that your favorite candidate should be a yes, do your best to convince us–but do recognize, please, that you are the only one who feels this way at present, and you’re going to have to change several minds, not just one or two, if you really hope to get what you want. We are taking the top x on to the next round, and your candidate is going to have to leapfrog over four other people to make it into that category…It ain’t happening. But a couple of people have tried.
I do think there is some value in labeling some candidates as a “maybe,” especially in a situation where we are ultimately choosing just one. Or, maybe I’m wrong and there isn’t, but I know there would be open revolt if I suggested going to a purely binary system.
Shodan, if you do manage to acquire a sandbag, let me know where I can purchase one too?
Ulf - some day beg or borrow a copy of “The New Rabbi” by Stephen Freid. Honest, it will make your experience look good in comparison.
I know this sounds like crazy talk but I want a job where the main thing I do is lead meetings like the one described here.
I have dealt with it now several times, and I love it. I find new ways to be diplomatic, and I get shit done, and I get to exercise those skills I do have in conceptual analysis (which is mainly what I’m doing when I try to communicate about relevance). I hate social interaction usually yet I come away from these meetings with a kind of elation.
Is there such a job?
Any seat on the Democratic National Committee? Heck, even just a lowly ward boss comes close. I’m a very active Democrat – trust me on that one.
We haven’t been able to get to the point where we actually bought one.
After only three months of discussion, we had the material narrowed down to either canvas, or vinyl. Then we took up the subject of the rope. The group was split fairly evenly on nylon vs. hemp, but some of the vinyl advocates agreed to form a subcommittee to discuss how much hemp rope would stretch, and we expect their report back before the end of the summer. Then we can decide on a color.
Shortly thereafter, we will submit our recommendations to the council, who will discuss it for a few weeks, change everything, and then call a special congregational meeting to broach the subject of how to pay for a sandbag when the carpeting in the hallway hasn’t been replaced in twenty years.
So I will have to get back to you.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, won’t they also have to consider which beach or desert the sand will come from? (Or box, for that matter.)
I had a similar interesting experience last year in an industry working group that I helped my company with. It’s a global industry and we were trying to get agreement on what new features we should add to our software. The coworker who was leading the working group had the dumb idea to break into groups of about 8 people, review a list of possible features together and narrow the list down to about 5. It was a dumb idea because:
[ul]
[li]The list was about 25 items long[/li][li]She gave us 30 minutes to do this[/li][li]the members of all the groups were diverse in culture, company and job duty so getting them all to agree on priorities was impossible[/li][/ul]
When my group started to look like a potential world war three because Germany, Arabia, and Russia would NOT agree, I told them to just mark their priorities individually and we’d let the group leader figure it out.
I once left a conservation group because I got a notice for a meeting to plan a planning meeting to pre-plan a planning meeting. Literally, word for word, that’s how it was phrased. Once the headache went away I send in my resignation.
Oh, I missed the part where you have to narrow the field to a single candidate. That makes things harder as it eliminates the consolations of partial victory and encourages people to soften their feeling of defeat by “having their say”. The fact that some of your colleagues are oblivious to how they’re imposing on the group makes things worse. Good luck.
Oh, I missed the part where you have to narrow the field to a single candidate. That makes things harder as it eliminates the consolations of partial victory and encourages people to soften their feelings of defeat by “having their say”. The fact that some of your colleagues are oblivious to how they’re imposing on the group makes things worse. Good luck.