Percentage of the workweek that a typical worker spends in meetings: 25. Odds that a person at a meeting doesn’t know why he’s there: 1 in 3.
–Annabelle Gurwitch, Fired, as quoted in Reader’s Digest, December 2007 edition, page 60
Notable and Quotable (II)
Posted in * Economics, Politics, Economy
Speaking as a corporate desk jockey, that seems about right. Yesterday I only spent two hours in useless meetings (and a third hour in one that was actually productive), but it was a Good Day.
I have a very poor view of meetings. When I was an executive of a church ministry I tried to keep them at an absolute minimum. I tended to work individually with people who needed the attention. Department heads had time to talk to each other and I felt little need of a formal setting. All of us were volunteers and I felt the commission that we had was a serious one and it was both abusive to the volunteers and a waste of time to keep them in regular meetings.
Just my view, and it seemed to work.
I measure the ineffectiveness of leaders by the number and length of the meetings they call.
I ‘ve found that managers who call a lot of meetings are poor planners, poor communicators and poor delegators of responsibility and authority.
Hence, they call a lot of meetings to find out what’s going on and what to do about it. The worst meetings held by these managers are those held to find out what’s gone wrong and to find a scape goat to shift the blame on.
Two of the worst supervisors I ever had used to call mandatory departmental meetings every month. Because the ethos of the University was that every opinion was welcome, we were all encouraged to bring forth our ideas on how to improve the running of the department, and to venture our opinion on the items under discussion. This would go on for about an hour and a half. Finally, at the end of the meeting, the supervisors would announce the plans they had already made before the meeting commenced, completing disregarding any discussion that had taken place for the last hour and a half. It did not take me long to realize that these meetings provided a great opportunity for doodling. Needless to say, the turnover in this department was phenomenal.
#3, while that can be true, our company has very few meetings, and it gets to be a “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere…..
#3 mousestalker wrote:
[i]I measure the ineffectiveness of leaders by the number and length of the meetings they call.[/i]
There goes both Congress and General Convention.
It’s a [i]Dilbert[/i] world, after all.