I was talking with a friend today about his experiences during a half-day planning session he endured with his favorite charity. The participants were all C-level executives who were donating their time to help this organization. The session was facilitated by an out of town consulting group, with high level experience in this sort of thing. He said it was the biggest waste of time, ever. The consultants were so ill prepared that no one could follow neither their recommendations nor the reasons for the activity in the first place. It got worse when they had to form Break-Out Teams to discuss what was apparently a fuzzy topic with fuzzier-yet directions for doing so. It was laughable, he said.

“I bet I know what the consultants said after the BreakOut session.” I said. “I bet they said THIS was exactly what we were looking for, a good and open discussion.” He said I got their wording and reaction almost exactly right.

Learning: As soon as someone asks for the group to form BreakOut sessions, run.

mime-attachment-31Over at US News and World Report today, I was thinking about the controversy with the Air Force One that flew over Manhattan yesterday and left a post “Blinding Flash of the Obvious, One Day Later.”