Planning Week

Long before I arrived at my university in 1988, the week before classes was set aside as Planning Week for returning faculty. (Staff planned all summer long.) I've had various leadership roles over the decades and more often than not I was responsible for leading one or more meetings during this week. 

My routine for leading a meeting was to remind people of the date with some lead time and ask for suggestions for the agenda with a firm deadline, write the agenda and distribute it, and annotate the agenda with specific goals that I did not so much hide as leave out to keep the agenda from being too verbose.

At the meeting I would take notes of the discussion on my copy of the agenda for follow-up details, try to make sure that everyone was participating, nip in the bud separate conversations among subsets of the group that excluded others, point out when the group was repeating itself, and articulate draft consensuses (consensi?) for the group to revise or object to. While it was important to make decisions it was another judgment call to table discussions as needing more reflection and/or external information.

After the meetings I would make notes on my to-do list of follow up details with specific deadlines, and ensure that the minutes of the meeting went out in a timely fashion both for corrections as well as to firm up memories of what we actually did.

As time went on I developed useful reflexes so that the above didn't feel like re-inventing the wheel each time. The groups varied; a few folk were more interested in talking than listening as often happens with faculty but by and large the vast majority of folk wanted to accomplish good things and heeding, supporting, and acknowledging that desire bought me a lot of goodwill making the job easier.

So now I'm in the last decade of my career. I've grown comfortable as Faculty Ombudsperson and am starting my third three-year term as such. A requirement of the job which I take seriously is not to hold any other leadership roles on campus to avoid conflicts (real or perceived) of interest. Planning Week feels weird to me. Much of what I do is listen passively to others speak and I do not go to many meetings. I have a sense of something missing but to be honest I need that to be missing as I try to mentally embrace the idea of retirement, which is not easy for me.