Those "dramatic" characters

Today I attended the School research development meeting, only 18 attended, but it was a very interesting meeting. I am beginning to see some funny sides of my colleagues and there were moments of good laugh and I had enjoyed it. The meeting was productive. We were asked to contribute to some questions about what we think is our strategy, long term vision, values, etc. We discussed about the "non-negotiable". Here's some observation of some interesting characters and their quotes (roughly what they said).

1) The "not my problem" Type - "in my subject group, there is no collegiality at all and it is like you have to be "nasty" in order to do research".

2) The "Calculative" Type - "it is not the amount of the investment (i.e., budget) it is the COST of the investment that decides our way forward in the school".

3) The "Economical" Type - "XX now decides that she is not giving us lunch, but hold on, we turn that around. Just yesterday, we had our little research seminar, where yy discussed about her submitted paper which is now in the R&R (revised and resubmit) stage, our group gives feedback, and you know what, this is a normal "research" meeting, not "staff" meeting, we end up still get our FREE lunch."

4) The "Lost" Type - "So, what do you think is our role model?"

5) The "Lateral Thinker" - "Perhaps we should learn from the BAD model?"

6) The "Pragmatic" Type - "We must assume others near to our ranking are also doing the same thing, if we are not going to do anything, we will sure drop down from our current ranking."

7) The "Visionary" Type - "You seemed to be in some sorts of illusion, thinking there MUST be some perfect saviour existing that will just turn up, no, it is from within about how we think about our research and what we want to do that matters."

8) The "Strategist" - "I think we need to think about our strength, weakness, opportunity and threat."

9) The "knowing what they want" Type - "I think research should be go beyond subject groups and working cross disciplinary research is a condition that is "non-negotiable" because I am not joining an accounting and finance department."

The meeting ended in 2 hours. I kept thinking what happened and what was discussed in the meeting and it made me smile and made my day, perhaps I didn't know some of colleagues too well and I thought I just knew something new today.