Work Daze

Attention, work slaves. Time to call a meeting of all your key people to choose a meeting time when you can hold a meeting on how to have better meetings.

Or not. One of the key problems with meetings is that so many of them are not essential, or even vaguely necessary. We’ve all had managers who love to meet simply for the pleasure of meeting. As the great French philosopher Louis Croissant put it, I meet, therefore I am (worth the gigantic salary I don’t deserve).

But all that wasted meeting time has finally reached the pencil heads. According to a recent “Theory & Practice” column by Phred Dvorak in The Wall Street Journal, companies are developing policies that, if they don’t result in fewer meetings, will make meetings more productive and less painful.

Or not. Consider the brilliant innovation practiced by a Silicon Valley start-up called Ruckus Wireless where “employees remove the chairs from some meetings so participants get to the point quicker.”

I embrace this technique 110%, but suggest you work up to it slowly by first removing the boss’s chair. Do it about five seconds before she sits down. This will make a lasting impression and demonstrate you are serious about saving the company time and money. You might also consider removing the conference table, the telephones, the electric sockets, the suspended ceiling, the window shades, the carpeting and the light fixtures.

Now that’s efficiency!

The Journal also references the effective meeting techniques of the director of employee learning at Southwest Airlines who does not start a meeting until she can figure out a reason for a “minicelebration.” One supposedly surprising basis for merriment was “a staffer’s purchase of a high-tech vacuum cleaner.”

Good heavens, if I was lucky enough to get such a prize, I’d expect more than a “minicelebration.” I’d demand a week-off, the better to vacuum the Astroturf on the boss’s putting green.

Another revelation for me is the fact that the need to improve meeting techniques has resulted in the birth of a new breed of consultant—the Certified Professional Facilitator. They could work on that title a bit – how about the Certified Professional Real Smart Super Duper Organizational Mastermind Facilitator – but you get the general idea.

Meeting facilitators get hired when companies finally realize that wasting time in stupid meetings results in wasted money. It also can be demoralizing to employees like thee and me who, let’s face it, are not too moralized in the first place.

One facilitator quoted, Janet Danforth, insists that her clients have a “clear purpose and agenda before they start.” They are also required to set a time limit and decide at the beginning who will make the final decisions. This seems a little harsh. I’m happy to sit in meetings for hours. My only requirement is that there are donuts. (When the custard-filled long-johns are gone, I’m gone.)

Another trick of the professional meeting facilitator is to ban the use of electronic gadgets like BlackBerry email devices and laptop computers. I suppose such a ban would encourage attendees to concentrate on the matters at hand, but how would we keep up with the latest critical developments on Nick and Jessica or Britney and Kevin? Yes, we waste time in meetings scanning the Internet for gossip, but think how efficient we are when gathered around the water cooler!

Speaking of innovations, one definitely must say hats off to the Intel Company for one of the brightest ideas in making meetings more effective. The giant chip maker is so insistent on maximizing productivity that it demands all new hires attend – you guessed it! – a four-hour meeting on “Effective Meetings.” This doesn’t make any sense, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps we should have a meeting on the subject.

Personally, I do not think that meetings need to change. Those of us who attend meetings must evolve. Since we are going to have to sit through an average of 5.6 meeting hours a week – and often it seems like 5.6 hours a day – we need to develop our ability to unfocus our brains and zone out. Like Zen monks, we must master mantras that transcend time and conference rooms. You can use my mantra. Simply close your eyes and say, “I am getting paid for this. I am getting paid for this. I am getting paid for this.”

If that doesn’t work, don’t despair. You can always play footsie.