How do you avoid getting burnt out by boredom when attending governance meetings? I've tried to do a bit of this kind of participation (attending my neighborhood's HOA meetings, some local town halls on housing policy etc) and it's extraordinary how inefficiently time seems to be used in these meetings and how much stultifying nonsense one has to wade through to get to the actual actionable and interesting stuff. Even compared to the corporate meetings I'm much more familiar with, and which can be pretty boring themselves, it's like 10x less efficient.
Is that not your experience so far, or have you just found motivation to push through the boredom, or what?
I would definitely not argue that governance meetings are always exciting :)
But not all governance meetings are created equal. Some topics will be more interesting/relevant and some groups are much better at running meetings.
As I've learned more about the mechanics of governance, I've started to find a bit of magic in almost every meeting I attend. The first time I attended a Board of Supervisors meeting I didn't get that much out of it. The more I learned more about the supervisors, the political fault lines, the issues on the table, and the overall art/science of "governance meetings", the more these meetings come to life.
For me, this is similar to the take that "soccer is boring." I used to think so too, but once I learned to see the shape of the team, how they link up, and how the tactical battles unfold and evolve, the whole game became fascinating to me.
Sports analogies aside, if a meeting truly is boring/inefficient, it raises the question - how do you run a meeting effectively? This is where administrative skills (like Robert's Rules of Order) come into play. Bad meetings don't need to stay that way! We can make them better. Especially for smaller, local groups like neighborhood associations, political clubs, etc. You can very quickly find yourself on the inside and in position to run a delightful meeting!
How do you avoid getting burnt out by boredom when attending governance meetings? I've tried to do a bit of this kind of participation (attending my neighborhood's HOA meetings, some local town halls on housing policy etc) and it's extraordinary how inefficiently time seems to be used in these meetings and how much stultifying nonsense one has to wade through to get to the actual actionable and interesting stuff. Even compared to the corporate meetings I'm much more familiar with, and which can be pretty boring themselves, it's like 10x less efficient.
Is that not your experience so far, or have you just found motivation to push through the boredom, or what?
I would definitely not argue that governance meetings are always exciting :)
But not all governance meetings are created equal. Some topics will be more interesting/relevant and some groups are much better at running meetings.
As I've learned more about the mechanics of governance, I've started to find a bit of magic in almost every meeting I attend. The first time I attended a Board of Supervisors meeting I didn't get that much out of it. The more I learned more about the supervisors, the political fault lines, the issues on the table, and the overall art/science of "governance meetings", the more these meetings come to life.
For me, this is similar to the take that "soccer is boring." I used to think so too, but once I learned to see the shape of the team, how they link up, and how the tactical battles unfold and evolve, the whole game became fascinating to me.
Sports analogies aside, if a meeting truly is boring/inefficient, it raises the question - how do you run a meeting effectively? This is where administrative skills (like Robert's Rules of Order) come into play. Bad meetings don't need to stay that way! We can make them better. Especially for smaller, local groups like neighborhood associations, political clubs, etc. You can very quickly find yourself on the inside and in position to run a delightful meeting!