Friday, November 27, 2009

Meeting Mania

If you want to kill the time, call meeting, is the famous saying. There are millions of meetings held every hour in corporate world. Even attending meeting is the status symbol. It is also an excuse for intentionally avoiding somebody. If you don’t call somebody for the meeting, the person interprets that he has been sidelined.

It is observed that most of the meetings conducted by companies have little positive impact on the performance of the company. Too many meetings and too long meetings have negative impact and can be detrimental to the interest of the company.

Most of the times bosses or seniors are responsible for this. They don’t care about the other’s time schedule. The issues are discussed without action plans and action responsibilities. Some meetings are the platform for others to show their talent and expertise on each and every subject. Some meetings are just like the classroom, where seniors just speak.

We can classify these meetings as under:

1) Meeting Class or lecture meeting: Such meetings are called by the people who have never performed in their career. They are in the organization just because owners like them. These are senior people designated as directors of special functions. It can be new projects, new initiatives, planning or any two-three alphabets. Employees always surprised about their role in the organization. Even they also don’t know their role in the organization. But they have their presence everywhere. As they are successful to create the impression that they are close to the management, employees pretend to respect them. Most of the times these people are kicked out as they tried to involve in everything and don’t permit others to do the work. They are very social people. They always call the meetings on small issues. The meetings are like classroom or training hall or sometimes philosophy class. Employees attend these meetings just to show the respect to the person. At the end of the meeting, employees get more confused and frustrated. If these meetings are continuously held, the employee may decide to quit the organization.

2) Meetings for enjoyment: Nobody bothers who called such meeting. Snacks are the attractions in these meetings. Participants attend theses meeting to listen poor jokes. Employees have to laugh on the jokes otherwise this can go against the person.

3) Waahaa Waahaa meetings: These meetings are called for just doing the waahaa waahaa of bosses and seniors. Employee sends sms to their bosses after his presentation. Everyday speaks well about everything. It is good to invite new employees for such meetings.

4) Concentration Camp meetings: These are typically review meetings. The employee who is stronger wins such meetings. The blame game is the only agenda of the meeting.

However it is upto the person who calls the meeting. Above meetings can be avoided. The willpower of the person is important for good meetings.

In my early career, there were two senior managers. When first manager was calling the meeting, it would last hours and hours without any fruitful result. Another manager’s meeting would last for 30 minutes, maximum 1 hour sometimes. But very effective. Once I asked the second person, how he manages meetings.

He replied, “Everybody prepares minutes of meeting after the meeting. I do it differently. I prepare minutes of meeting in my mind before entering the meeting hall. It works.”

5 comments:

Ram Ranjan said...

Good One.

Trupti Joshi said...

You are impossible Vinod

Unknown said...

So very true......specially about lecture meeting

Sanjive Kumar Sharma said...

I Think this is great article defining how the time waste is planned in corporate world? Majority of people tend to engage in discussion to pass time and the meetings are the most formalised way. Guarding the direction, the length of meeting and objective of meeting is very important from people productivity point of view

Unknown said...

Very true…most of such meetings are futile meetings. Waste of time, resources ,energy & money.
In fact these days meetings do not serve its actual purpose. You have done perfect classification of meetings.Lecture meetings & Waahaa Waahaa meetings are common part of every meetings.

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