Could I do a better job? ... Well, maybe not.

Now and then I get to wondering about whether I'm actually doing everything I can to help other people. I complain so much here about clueness people and unnecessary work, but every so often I find myself thinking things like, "You should already know that, it was sent out in an e-mail... three months ago, along with a bunch of other information, mostly on another topic." or "You should already know that, it was discussed at several meetings... not like most people on the team come to even half the meetings, though." or "The whole team knows that, we've been doing it all along... but you just joined a month ago."

Maybe I could be doing more. I could go into more detail in e-mails to the team or group discussions. Minutes of meetings are normally e-mailed to me and H., but maybe people would be better informed if they got regular reminders about that stuff. The team is big enough that new people show up relatively regularly for one reason or another, and we could brief them better. How much would that help things?

But I have my doubts that that would do much good, because it never takes too long for people to ask stupid questions that I'm absolutely certain have been adequately explained, but they still don't know.

For example, in a meeting last week, the unhelpful guy asked which spreadsheet was the economic review matrix. Not only has he been told that many times both in person and by e-mail, not only has the economic review matrix been in use for months so if he didn't know he should have asked before now, not only has he personally been to meetings where he, the economist and I worked on the economic review matrix... but a computer screen was projected for the entire meeting to see open to the relevant folder on the network, and the economic review matrix has "economic review matrix" in its name. (And yes, it's clear that he could see the screen from where he was sitting and all that.)

Basically, the answer to his question was literally in front of his face. But he couldn't figure that out - and the unhelpful guy may be a recent, perfect example of this, but he's far from the only one - so I don't think more complete briefings by me would make too much of a difference.