> That sentiment (though I didn't think of it in quite this fashion) is why I set up a bi-weekly project management meeting at my last office, and tried to set up something similar for technical people.
At my last office, I set up something very similar for our org with similar success. Your PM procedural problem case is a perfect example down to the complaining about having to attend a meeting they weren't required to attend.
Enter new management. After 8 weeks of ice-breaking meetings in triplicate and taking cues from all the wrong people, the first concrete thing they did that touched me was cancel that meeting. I found new employment shortly thereafter.
It's now an essential part of my repertoire. For technical people? Well that's mostly my team. We have a Trello board where anyone on team can drop RFC cards. Members of my team meet every couple weeks to review and discuss. It's visible to the whole org if anyone else is interested. (Generally, they aren't.)
I wanted the technical meeting because that was actually the weak spot for the org. Each team was isolated from each other to a greater than necessary degree. And no team was really "world class". But several had a phenomenal grasp of some aspect of development that the others lacked. I wanted to breakdown the, largely, artificial barrier between teams and better spread this knowledge and capability.
In the end, I quit before I could realize that, and what did happen (after I left) was more like you describe. Several teams basically did what you describe and set up their own internal learning and instruction approaches. But that doesn't help across the org, the bad teams are still bad. And the problem, mostly, wasn't the people but the time. They needed an opportunity to step back and think, and the firefighting they'd gotten stuck in was neverending. An hour every couple of weeks to hear and learn from others would've benefited them greatly.
At my last office, I set up something very similar for our org with similar success. Your PM procedural problem case is a perfect example down to the complaining about having to attend a meeting they weren't required to attend.
Enter new management. After 8 weeks of ice-breaking meetings in triplicate and taking cues from all the wrong people, the first concrete thing they did that touched me was cancel that meeting. I found new employment shortly thereafter.
It's now an essential part of my repertoire. For technical people? Well that's mostly my team. We have a Trello board where anyone on team can drop RFC cards. Members of my team meet every couple weeks to review and discuss. It's visible to the whole org if anyone else is interested. (Generally, they aren't.)