Minutes of the Meeting by David Wethey
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In the third of a monthly article on decision making, David Wethey, founder, AAI discusses the global obsession with meetings.
“Before we start today, let’s go through the minutes of the last meeting. And can I just make sure that you, David, are happy to do the minutes of today’s session”.
Mr Chairman, I just wish it was minutes. Our global obsession with meetings is not costing us minutes. It’s taking hours out of our day, days out of our week and weeks out of our year.
If we allow for weekends, public holidays, annual leave and days off sick, we probably have an effective working year of 220 days. Let’s suppose that on average we are involved in one meeting lasting an hour, and one lasting an hour and a half every day. That is 330 hours in the year spent in meetings – more than two complete working months! From the department of invented, but plausible, statistics I believe that 50% of all meetings take the participants no closer to a decision, and that more than 60% of the people hours are wasted.
I blame a meeting culture that gives us all the illusion of ‘moving things on’, when so often meetings serve no useful purpose, and absorb billions of people hours that otherwise might have been productive.
For me a meeting is an intrinsically low-tech phenomenon, born out of the gregariousness of home sapiens. I see it as generated by social instincts, not commercial ones. We like getting together to chat!
Here is a checklist to use if you feel a meeting coming on:
- Is this meeting absolutely necessary?
- Does it have to take place tomorrow / this week / on the 31st, or whenever?
- Who HAS to be there?
- What advantage is there in inviting the ‘nice to haves’?
- How long have you allocated? Is that long enough? (Or indeed too long?)
- What’s on the agenda? Can we get through all those items in the time given? Really? If we can’t, which items shall we leave out?
- Who’s kicking off and managing the meeting?
- Who’s responsible for winding it up, summarising what’s been achieved, writing up the conclusions / decisions?
- Who is in charge of deciding what to do next, eg:
- Endorsing the decision?
- Communicating the decision?
- Implementing the decision?
- Or – give me strength – setting the next meeting?
10. Who is responsible for working out the optimum balance between thinking, doing and meeting?
One of the advantages of having been around the business world for a while (OK, I admit it, since 1965), is that I can make some comparisons. My impression is definitely that things are much worse now. I’m going to put forward a couple of theories, and sketch in some background to each.
Theory One: behaviour and manners have deteriorated to the point where many in the work place have personal styles that are so acerbic and uncooperative that they are unsuited to any recognised form of constructive debate.
Without going overboard with generalisations, I don’t believe you have to look much further than TV programmes like The Apprentice, Come Dine with Me, or indeed Question Time to see evidence of what I am talking about. Confrontational broadcast journalism has made direct attacks and interruption the default setting. Glorification of naked ambition and abrasiveness on programmes like The Apprentice gives licence to young business people to behave rudely and egotistically. Put Sugar’s babes and lads, or the round robin diners in one room, and the producers make sure the sparks fly.
Theory Two: (and this is a more recent development) many people today seem to be happier talking on the phone, texting, e-mailing or social networking than actually meeting anyone in a live show.
The nearly universal ability to keyboard and publish one’s own material has given the class of 2011 more confidence in their opinions and indeed their personal ‘brands’. Remote one to one interface has become the preferred way of interacting with other people. Plenty of opportunity to chat and listen – basically 50% share of airtime in fact. And you can choose compatible chat partners – in terms of personality and interests. By comparison a meeting of, say, 10 people in a conference room is a much less attractive prospect. There are all sorts of disadvantages, compared to the one to one mode:
- · Hierarchy
- · Discipline
- · Diversity (age, culture, education, style etc)
- · No control over time (either the meeting is too long, or it’s too short)
- · Above all the expectation that everyone is supposed to sublimate their opinions in the search for some form of consensus.
David Wethey is writing a book on decision making and blogging most days on www.makingbetterdecisionsbetter.co.uk. Although his working life has been spent in the marketing/advertising arena, the book is going to relate to business itself, and also to politics, the law, medicine, the forces, the emergency services and sport. In terms of individual decision making, I have looked at choosing partners, houses, careers, and also at gambling.
Posted: September 22nd, 2011 | Author: will.armstrong | Filed under: Growth Drivers, Uncategorized | Tags: AAI, David Wethey, global obsession, Marketing Society blog, meetings | Leave a Comment »
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