Who isn’t busy these days?   Take a moment to look around you now and you’ll see people living their busy lives.  Sure I’ve been busy, but should I blog about all the busy things I’ve been doing?  List out all the mundane tasks that seemed really important to accomplish at the time?… give you a bulleted array of items I’ve been doing since I last blogged?….drone on and on about all my important activities?  Yeah…no.  It would be against my GenXness (and yes, I just made up a new word).

So why do we do this in meetings?  Why do we spend hours of our lives in committee meetings (sitting in uncomfortable chairs in small stuffy rooms around tables) talking about how “busy” we’ve been?  Why are reports to board members (board packets) filled with lists of what we’ve been busy doing?   Sure it is important to know that we have done SOMETHING…but why not focus on the outcomes of our work, the results of being “busy” and the impact of our efforts.

I was just reading thru nearly a dozen board reports and I noticed that EVERY SINGLE report used the word “busy”.  Is it harsh to say that I don’t really want to know what you did last Tuesday or what meetings you’ve been to?  I trust that you are busy doing what you need to do to be successful at your job.  I would rather  know about what happened because you were at that meeting &  what you got out of it.  And if you can’t answer THAT question…maybe you should spend your time in a different way.  

If you want to engage X’ers in your work and meetings, focus on outcomes, results and impact and join me in putting a moratorium on the word “busy”.