Photo by Philipp Henzler
Michele stared blankly at her calendar. It was a Wednesday, the middle day of the week in the middle of a typical month. 9:00 a.m. meeting, 10:00 a.m. meeting, 11:00 a.m. meeting, 12:00 p.m. working lunch meeting, 1:00 p.m. meeting, etc.
It was 8:37 a.m. and shortly Michele was going to start another day that comprised of nothing but meetings. According to her calendar, from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. she was in meetings without one break. At this realization of another day lost and out of his control, Michele should feel some level of anger or resentment but she numbed herself to that anger long ago.
As one of a handful of Directors of Information Technology at a University, Michele had seen her role become more and more critical over the last five years. Budget cuts combined with massive change in higher education made the need for increasingly better technology platforms a must. On top of it all, it was a University. Administration needed to be bought in—unanimously. Faculty needed to be bought in—unanimously. Staff and students didn’t seem to have much say, but they needed to be involved in the conversation anyway. As a result, there were meetings. Lots and lots of meetings.
One week Michele estimated she spent over 42 hours in meetings. This didn’t include all of his time spent preparing for the meetings and following up after meetings. Michele’s real work day was beginning to look more and more like one of her early IT jobs, 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. If that wasn’t bad enough Michele had a team of four managers and 30 support staff under them. The only time she could coach and develop them was after 6:00 p.m. That meant they were staying late at work, away from their families, longer than should be necessary. Family. Michele tried not to think of family this early in the week. She needed to at least hold out until Thursday afternoon to let herself go there in mind. She bit her lip in an effort to distract herself. The calendar came back into focus and Michele suited up for another wasted day filled with meetings.
Meetings own a special place in my workplace dysfunction Hall of Fame. They are the flagship exhibit at the end of the hallway set aside for “most common workplace dysfunctions that shouldn’t exist.” Think of it as the workplace equivalent of the measles. There are simple antidotes and inoculations; and yet, almost every organization is guilty of this pervasive dysfunction. There is no good reason for it. Unlike a dysfunctional boss or an unhealthy culture, meetings can be easily reworked, restructured, and managed to prevent dysfunction. Perhaps these booster-shot-questions provide vitamin-packed-ideas, with antibiotic-assessments providing functionality at its best:
What’s the purpose or objective? If you can’t articulate one, you shouldn’t call one.
Who should attend? Meetings are not a party. More is not merrier.
How long should the meeting be? Meetings shouldn’t be marathons.
What are the ground rules for the meeting?
What’s that post-meeting hygiene? How are you going to ensure that stuff actually gets done?
Simple enough? Yes, but I have yet to attend a meeting that has run so well I could simply check off all of these questions. Ridiculous? Perhaps, but imagine living a world where meetings were done right. No wasted time. No soap-boxing. No pointless blather. No fuzziness on why you’re there and what you need to do. No politics. No dysfunction. I know, I know. It sounds too good to be true. But what option do we have? Death by meetings? No thank you.
Brandon Smith
Latest posts by Brandon Smith (see all)
- F-E-A-R - August 25, 2014
- Death by Meetings - August 11, 2014
