Confessions of a corporate cog

Had two, back-to-back excruuuuuuuuciatingly long meetings this week (excruciatingly long for pregnant type persons).

One was our weekly team meeting - spent most of the time going over our agenda for our team retreat in two weeks.

Quick! What are 8 letters meaning indifference!
Answer: w-h-o-c-a-r-e-s

I hate team retreats. Too much blah blah blah, not enough action. It seems like we analyze, evaluate, assess and contemplate all the same old questions - questions that don't necessarily have answers - only to come to the same conclusions. These are all things that would be nice to do, change or add but the reality is there are only so many hours in a day, only so many dollars in our budget and only so much influence our group has to turn the wheels of progress.

But persistence is the mother of futility and every year or so we make grand plans to have a team retreat and we rehash it all again. After the retreat, our sense of accomplishment lasts about as long as a sugar buzz. It vaporizes the instant we realize we didn't really DO anything except create more work for ourselves.

Oh sure - retreats can be valuable on some level and I know some people who actually enjoy them. In most cases, a retreat is simply a JOOE exercise (Justify Our Own Existence); meaning write down a bunch of goals and make a list of other things we could be doing to "add value" to prove to corporate heads we actually matter. As I currently need employment, this is a good thing. But I still don't like retreats...and I never will.

Picture: http://www.despair.com/