I’m adding this text, as a linked Google Doc, to my first big meeting of the year tomorrow. If it works, I’ll probably use it in other meetings and possibly even in my classes.

Hedge Against Bad Guesses

I’ve learned this summer that an agenda is a best guess by (and sometimes “single story” told by) a hopefully well intentioned leader.  

Sure, leaders have things that we need to accomplish, but we also have to ensure that we have “guessed right” with as many of our meeting agendas as possible. 

If today’s meeting isn’t the meeting that you thought you would be attending or that you hoped you would be attending or that you really needed to be attending, please let me know below.  If I handed you the agenda-writing duties, what would you have planned?  If I made a left turn, mid-meeting, and you felt I should have made a right turn, tell me what was left undiscussed or undiscovered.  Write below the line what needs more time, more turning over, perhaps its own agenda item in the future.  Don’t be shy or overly polite — even if we can’t get to it right away, anything you add will help me to calibrate my attention, my guessing, and the bets I make with our time.    

In order to get off the schneid, which is a glorious thing, especially in baseball, you first have to be on the schneid.

I like to remind myself of this whenever things are overly messy, opaque, mistake-laden, chaotic, sluggish, or just plain unlucky. All that is great in us, when it finally breaks through, will be amplified by this backdrop.