Title: Hi HN, I&#x27;ve just got out of a meeting and like almost every non-technical meeting I have next to no idea what the discussion was about.<p>I find a lot of non-technical meetings go something like this:<p>&quot;Hi guys, as you might be aware [Robert Smith] of the [communications department] has recently released his [quarterly review] of our ongoing [transformation strategy]. We&#x27;ve received a lot of positive feedback so far, but I wanted to give you all an opportunity to share your thoughts in this meeting. Would anyone like to go first?&quot;<p>Then about half of the team (normally the same people) will jump into the discussion and somehow seem to know what the hell is going on.<p>Meanwhile I&#x27;m there wondering who is this [Robert Smith] of the [communications department]? What is the [transformation strategy] and why does it need a [quarterly review]?<p>Occasionally someone will ask what the [transformation strategy] is, but typically it won&#x27;t be answered in a way that helps me understand what&#x27;s going on because even more names and departments will be dropped and the strategy itself will be described in such a vague way that it means nothing.<p>I guess a concrete example that comes to mind was from a place I worked previously where they would talk about their &quot;omnichannel&quot; strategy a lot. Whenever someone asked what &quot;omnichannel&quot; meant it was described in a way that seemed to mean nothing, &quot;a multichannel sales strategy&quot;, etc. About 6 months into the job I finally figured out we were just using it to refer to some extra functionality that we were working on that would allow customers to collect and return online orders from our regional stores. But this was never how it was referred to in corporate meetings.<p>Am I the only one who experiences this? I can&#x27;t work out if there&#x27;s a part of my brain that&#x27;s missing that prevents me from understanding what&#x27;s being discussed in these meetings or if this is a common experience. I&#x27;m very practically minded which probably doesn&#x27;t help, but I worry I&#x27;m not making enough of an effort to understand what&#x27;s happening in the business outside my personal bubble.<p>Does anyone struggle with this, or do you have any recommendations for people like me who do struggle to understand what&#x27;s happening in corporate meetings?
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