Meetings – Just Don’t Go

In my introduction to this series I described an atrocious waste of time by a director on an ego trip. She called meetings which only had one purpose – to aid her in establishing power. As I pointed out, these meetings did not benefit the company and they did not benefit the employees. After several of these meetings I started asking myself the question, “Why am I here?” Honestly, I didn’t have a good answer.

And so that’s David’s number one rule of meetings – have a good answer to the question, “Why am I here?”

In the case of these meetings I started responding to them with a little deception – yes, I’m sorry, I wasn’t completely honest. After about half an hour in the meeting I would make my pager beep (this was back in the days when we actually used pagers). I would check the number on the screen (which wasn’t really there) and excuse myself from the meeting. I then went back to my office and did some real work. I usually returned to the meeting an hour or so later without missing anything of importance.

I did that for a couple of weeks without any repercussions. Then I just decided to stop attending. That worked to. I was never missed. Either I was so unimportant nobody missed me or the meeting was so unimportant nobody missed me. Whatever the answer is I got real work done instead of stroking and ego.

In our culture we tend to accept an invitation to any meeting without question. I would suggest to you that we need to change our response and ask questions for each request. For instance, a meeting without an agenda usually ends up being something between a social party and a bickering session. Neither you nor the organization is going to benefit from spending your time in that way.

When you receive a request for a meeting why not make sure::
• That there is a definite purpose to the meeting.
• That the purpose is best addressed through a meeting (as opposed to through correspondence/memorandums, etc).
• That you will have an impact on the meeting or the meeting will have an impact on you. Are you either going to contribute something of value to the meeting or learn something of value from the meeting? Ask yourself, “What would be different if you didn’t attend?”
• That there is an agenda.

Now obviously you have to navigate the political waters of your organization. There were times when I knew that I did need to attend a useless meeting because of politics (and I did). You will need to use your own judgment. There will be times when someone has the power to insist on your attendance.

That being said, keep the above questions in mind. There may be times when you are able to make a judgment call. Your employer might even appreciate it when you use your time judiciously. Meetings - if it doesn’t make sense for you to be there, consider not attending.

 

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Meetings - Just Don't Go