A previous incumbent in my professional role had this to say: “You can either do the meetings, or you can do the work – not both.”
The cult of the meeting is one of the most deceptive, destructive and irritating to have pushed its way into modern business practice. Second only to “the workshop” with its pernicious and provenly incorrect contention that “the more people one gets in the room, the greater degree of creativity and consensus”, “the meeting” prioritises sharing coffee and flipcharts over productivity, thinking and action. The number of times I have finished one meeting to be met with a response which is broadly “Great, OK. When should we meet again?” is bewildering and staggering.
It’s not therapy: it doesn’t have to be regular to work – and the meetings should be the consequence of the thinking and the creativity, not entirely removed from them in order to fit in with some bizarre matrix of holidays, acronym-denominated meetings and travel plans. I realise that there are such things as real deadlines that have to be met if products are to get to market and to realise their potential, but artificial deadlines do not concentrate the mind, nor help to make things better – they dispirit, dissipate and disenchant.
