Meetings are the arch-enemy of productivity. They bring business to a grinding halt under the guise of making key decisions, training employees on crucial issues, and moving business forward. –INSERT LOUD HONKING SIREN SOUND–Wrong!
Typical meetings require gathering (or flying or driving) all employees in from whatever area of the office (or globe) to sit in a room and listen to peers and superiors regurgitate info they:
a.) Can read/Learn on their own.
b.) Already know.
c.) Don’t need.
Some companies use that new fangled technology GoToMeeting to inform their employees. This after they went through the ironic/redundant effort to gather them all in a room from vast corners of the office or globe that also had a computer and phone in which to meet remotely.
Sales meetings will usually take the whole sales force out of selling for days. Attention: THERE IS NO SELLING IN MEETINGS!
This silliness of meetings is often plagued with IT issues, such as spotty video, lack of sound for presentations, phone issues for conference calls, and more. Even funnier is that these same issues happen during IT presentations at meetings.
We have too many meetings about meeting to discuss meeting about meetings that can improve meetings! Stop it would you please?!?!?!
Meetings are often a huge expense: Time, hotels, food, travel, down-time, etc. They pump you full of caffeine and crappy food so you stay awake in short bursts. Just as you start to crash from the sugar high and food coma, they drop the temperature in the meeting room to sub-arctic temperatures so you will shiver back to consciousness.
Meetings are the highlight of any business day for some people. We all know the type; blowhard, self-important windbags who want to talk for hours and hours about things they feel are most important. They monopolize the time; causing the meeting to run late or miss breaks with no regard for anything or anyone who may also have a friggin’ life. These winners can’t read a room or audience being bored out of their skulls or don’t care. These people are also the ones who have one-on-one conversations/dialog during meetings. Save that shit for after the meeting and stop wasting the room’s time. Inside jokes with a small group or individuals by these asshats waste more time at meetings. No one gets it. No one cares.
Corporate bureaucracy continues to stifle business like a wet Snuggie. More meetings each day, more paperwork, planning to plan, more busywork and less productivity are what the “Business World” has (d)evolved into. We have added processes and in essence, added more links in the chain. In an attempt to “streamline” process, we are adding more work, details, forms, emails, computer programs (we often don’t really understand), phone calls, voicemails, copies, and information collecting. To do anything, we often must go through at least five or more people (channels/departments/etc.) and repeat requests/info over and over and over and over and over. Micromanagement is the way of the business world.
Let’s please try and keep meetings to a minimum. In this day and age where we can meet virtually anywhere, we don’t need to actually meet. We can talk on the phone. We can send emails, fax, make websites for information, mail things. We do not need to waste everyone’s time being crammed in a room bombarded with redundant information by blowhard, ignorant asshats for days on end. Stop the nonsense.
This post was submitted by Brady Jones.