Communication Mechanisms

My group is holding a house meeting tomorrow evening. Nothing extraordinary to be discussed, just the usual quarterly get together to review finances, financing and building maintenance needs.

Getting a group of people together with a common interest in a property would appear to be relatively easy. In fact, it took my group a few years before we came up with the device best suited for checking everyone's availability and confirming plans to attend.

That device is a simple piece of paper. On the paper is a grid with each of our names listed top to bottom in the first column, and calendar dates heading a series of subsequent columns going left to right. This paper gets posted in our common area near the front door. Each of us puts a check across from our names on all the dates listed when we can make a meeting. When there is a column where all the Xs line up that is our meeting date.

This posted form easily achieves what phone calls, emails, a Yahoo group and a few other things never seemed to manage effectively. It gets each of us to pause on the way in or out of the building, think about our calendars and inform each partner about everyone else's schedule, all in one step. Pedestrian, perhaps. But as they say, sometimes it's the little things.