Cold Enough to Freeze the Glue Off Your Baubles

I imagine it's a testament to the interesting variety of my job that I can have, in the space of a single week, every conceivable kind of meeting: productive, collaborative, confrontational, baffling, amusing, frustrating and boring. 

This list does not preclude the chance that one, some or all of the meetings I've had this week were more than one of the above.

Ranged like a band of Disney dwarves, these events peppered my week, stole my time, brought me only the most intangible results and made me think about the nature of the public service.

I have this on my mind these days because not next week but the week after that I'll be taking two weeks of executive training at Queen's University in Kingston. The advance reading dwells heavily on the theme of the ruination of the role of the public service, its degradation in the public eye, the names it gets called and the cultivated, pervasive notion that government workers are spoiled parasites leaching value out of the economy and living high on the hog on the broken back of the taxpayer. 

Depending on which meeting I'm at, I think these notions either are manifestly false or ring sadly true. It takes all kinds to make a public service.

It's probably also true that the public service holds no monopoly on the worst or best kind of meetings.

But the public service meeting I really don't get and have zero patience for is "confrontational." The one meeting I had this week in this category featured people from four different ministries and multiple divisions within those ministries. The people who convened the meeting made it clear that, while others were invited, their thoughts were really not all that welcome. So this was a baffling meeting. When those invited dared to speak their thoughts anyway, the baffling meeting became confrontational.

In case you're wondering, this meeting was the first step in a multi-ministry collaboration to review some public policies affecting about eleven million Ontarians.

It was sort of like starting the multi-country collaboration on the International Space Station with a fist fight.  

*************************************************************

The title of today's post is something I heard someone say this past week. 

Here's another line I heard: "Don't let a burrito take you down."

Each has a back story, but I think they're funnier without 'em.

Molly's post this week can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!  

Karen