Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.
Interpretation
Meetings should be used judiciously, as overuse can negatively impact team morale.
This quote emphasizes the importance of moderation in meetings, likening them to salt that enhances a dish when used sparingly but can ruin it when overused. It suggests that just as excessive salt can overwhelm the taste of food, too many meetings can dampen team spirit and motivation, detracting from productivity and engagement.
In practice
During a team workshop on enhancing productivity, this quote could be shared to remind participants about the optimal use of meetings.
That's the great irony of allowing passionate people to work from home. A manager's natural instinct is to worry that her workers aren't getting enough work done. But the real threat is that they will wind up working too hard. And because the manager isn't sitting across from her worker anymore, she can't look in the person's eyes and see burnout.
Most work is not coming up with The Next Big Thing. Rather, it's improving the thing you already thought of six months - or six years - ago. It's the work of work.
IF you are not making mistakes, then you are not doing anything.
Odd words floated back to them over the hundreds of heads. "Nobility of spirit"..."intellectual contribution"..."greatness of heart"...It did not mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him. He suddenly remembered Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," and again had to suppress a grin.
We learned about dignity and decency - that how hard you work matters more than how much you make... that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don't take chances then you'll never have a winning hand, and I've no regrets.
Owning your own feelings, rather than blaming them on someone else, is the mark of a person who has moved from contracted to expanded awareness.
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