Post-Mortem

I got an amusing meeting invitation from Polo - a post-mortem on a project which I had thought barely underway. Now, I'm all for reflecting on how well a project has been run, and what can be learned from the experience, but I like to wait until it's been delivered. Call me old-fashioned, but up until then, cutting into a project mid-stream is likely to cause a whole lot of blood and guts to come pouring out and have detrimental effects on the patient.
The usual suspects were gathered - me, FO, Merk, Gabriel, Tank, and Axis. The first thing we did was make jokes about not doing any finger-pointing by doing just that. In a way, it lightens the mood, or lets you take out some frustrations. In another way, it makes it clear that that's exactly what everyone wants to do.
Polo, however, started with "I feel that I've had so little to do with this project, having been overseas, that I can Chair this meeting without bias."
A mellowed FO leapt into the fray with "Hang on - over a month ago, I had a meeting with you and Gabriel to ensure that there were resources, so you were involved!"
And you can guess how it progressed from there.
Honestly, it looked like everyone was sitting around that table (almost everyone), willing to accept that they had a part of the guilt, but that someone else had to share it. Even I could stuck my hand up for a bit of it, on the basis that if I hadn't gone on holidays, I would have been around pushing for status and making sure that someone did something. Gabriel admitted that he understood things so little, that he was relying on data from Merk. Merk admitted that he thought he had to produce the data, but didn't know why or how, and was waiting for FO (or possibly me). Tank admitted that he thought he only had to define the solution and hand over to Axis. Axis admitted that he had the definition, but hadn't had the time, and hadn't told anyone. Gabriel admitted that he knew about Axis lack of time, but thought it wasn't important because there was no data yet.
The thing that was missing was FO admitting that he hadn't briefed Merk well enough, and hadn't spent any time himself chasing things up, status-wise.
I think that that's exactly what Polo wanted. He's a clever enough chap, and I know he'd been talking to his people well before the meeting. He didn't need their admissions at the meeting - he needed FO to hear them. He knew what should have been said, and I'm sure he could have planned for it to be said in the appropriate sequence. It was a brilliantly-orchestrated display of unity and shared responsibility that I hope FO treasures for the rest of the month, because it's as close as we're going to get to an understanding between the thinkers and the doers this year, I think.
After the meeting, when the dust settled, we all went back to our cosy little environments and forgot our recent falls from grace, our admissions of guilt, and carried on as if nothing had happened - except for FO, who probably had another peaceful afternoon thinking that everything was sorted, and he had nothing more to worry about. The project was in hand. I don't have the heart to tell him otherwise.
Nothing changes because a meeting makes a resolution. A meeting is like a project. It has a plan, an implementation, and a review. If the plan is not followed, then there's generally no likelihood of a successful meeting, coming under budget or on time. If there's no following the plan, then the review is likely to be little more than "whoopsey" and we straggle on regardless into the next meeting, or just keep going on with the current one. A meeting is reviewed when the participants get the meeting notes and follow up on their actions, and the owner of the results determines that all such have occurred (for a one-off meeting - but for a regular meeting, the next meeting is the follow-up).
If the meeting has no resolutions, then what was the point? Status? That doesn't generally need a meeting on its own. You can post a bulletin or a memorandum. In fact, that's how Axis later described his documentation for the project - not so much a set of requirements as a memorandum of understanding. I would go further, knowing that FO has only cursorily accepted same, and say that it is merely a memorandum of misunderstanding until he signs off on it. Knowing FO, he won't. His email is still broken.