Meeting Menace

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings." ~Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"

Hmmm but meetings can be quite interesting

I got to know this during my first job, almost 1 year back.

I was then a fresh MBA grad, straight from college…….. With a lot of zest to transform/upgrade the company I work for.

My assumption was that a meeting is a great phenomenon which helps to generate ideas to transform any company to a Microsoft or GE

Almost 1 week after I joined, I got a mail informing me about the monthly business review meeting…. I felt so honored and started preparing enthusiastically for it. I eagerly went through my MBA lessons about, the Three P's of Successful Meetings: Preparation, Participation, Prioritization and started planning accordingly

It was a monthly review meeting attended by the CEO, VP’s, Sales managers and some advisory board members.

So the day finally arrived……… I came to office by early…….. And by 9.25 walked towards the meeting room, looking with lot of pity at all those who were not supposed to attend the meeting, the underprivileged ones.

The meeting was supposed to start at 9.30 and I was the only one in the meeting room. By 9.45-10-10.30 I think everyone were at their seats. The event started off…….. But very soon I realized that it was done as an unwanted chore, a mega waste of time

During my 6 months tenure there, I attended a lot of meetings and was enlightened by a lot of facts.

1. It is a good platform to sharpen acting skills. How ever bored or puzzled you are, you should not express it……… Pretend as if the mission of your life is listening to the speaker. And to add special effects you should lavishly use comments like
a) yeah, I agree with u
b) yes, very true
c) absolutely right
d) Is it? Oh interesting and so on………..

Go to every meeting that is appropriate for you to attend. Everyone knows meetings are a colossal waste of time, so use them. Never miss the opportunity at wasting time by ducking out of or avoiding meetings. Once you’re in meeting, it’s all about you. You can plan your weekend; think about the movie you watched the night before or book read recently, draw, do some creative work, dream……….. Lot of possibilities explore it.!!!

Always have a lot of documents with you, either soft or hard copy. When the speaker is talking about some number………… pretend to cross check & verify.

The one & only interesting part of a meeting is food…….. enjoy it

The most effective practice to force a speaker to finish his speech is to look at your watch frequently…….. and if this doesn’t work, you can go to the next step of bringing it close to the ear as if to check if its working properly, make sure the speaker+2 others notice this at the same time

On a serious note…….. This was not the case always. I have attended many meetings with serious brainstorming sessions, resulting in very innovative decisions. But Generally I feel we waste a lot of time in meetings and lack of results after the meeting can often be traced to poor preparation, or the G.I.G.O. Principle.

But the end note is……… good or bad, meetings are fun!!!