Where I work, we like to schedule meetings. Like most large organizations, meetings ARE the work; they become this extension of the work you do. Let’s all sit around and talk about the work we’re doing and you make sure that you’re ok with what I’m doing, and I’ll do the same for you. Then at the end we’ll clap each other on the back and say how well we did at communicating what it was we were meeting about.

There’s several fundamental problem with meetings at work.  I’m not talking about ways to run effective meetings, I’m talking about why most don’t work. Running effective ones is another topic. And I apologize in advance for my cynicism, but this has been running rampant for 3 or 4 weeks and I’m sick of it.

15 Minutes is spent making small talk and waiting for everyone to get there.

The problem with actually meeting is that in order to meet, everyone needs to know what everyone else does. It’s a fundamental thing in business, and i think it’s a good thing. After all, roles and responsibilities are important. However, with a meeting, you have to actually be there physically, and in order to do that you need to actually show up there. I think that there’s a proper equation to figure out how many minutes it’ll take the meeting to get started….

Amount of people invited (times) Geographic location of everyone in building (divided by) Geographic location of meeting (minuts) time it takes for people to get their bearings and figure out which conference room “Maple Leaf Lane” is (plus) introductions = The buffer of time it takes to start a meeting.

People like to hear themselves speak. Including myself.

Humans by nature are a social species. In all cultures, we travel in bands and families are created and are the backbone of society. That being said, everyone has different personalities. Personally I’m what’s called a Type A personality. Some would call this personality a “jerk” who talks over people, or a business minded person hyperfocused on getting stuff done. So, you put 3 or 4 of these folks in a room, and everyone vying for everyone else to understand them. It’s not necessarily a problem if you get 2 of these people together on a team, as a matter of fact, most type A people are the doers at companies.

People ultimately just whine and complain. Including myself.

Designers and most passionate people don’t like to sit on the sidelines and wait for something to come along and bite them in the ass. They would rather sway people’s opinion about something, talk through something and make some actual change. This can be implied to most anything in a service based economy or if you’re in the business of making actual stuff, business process, websites, branding, etc.

There’s a fundamental subjectivity to the work that lends itself to disagreement.

Highly opinionated people tend to see things, and if they didn’t come up with a solution or have a vested interest in it, than it’s not important. Meetings are a breeding ground to vocalize your gripes and concerns about a project. This is all well and good at the beginning, but while we’re in development, it’s something less to be desired.

I’ll be the first to call myself out on this.

I’m obsessed with business process, changing things for the better, working with people and design. I also at times selfishly feel like i’m the center of the universe, I’ll admit it. So if I hear about a project where I wasn’t consulted where I wasn’t able to give my sage wisdom, then I wig out. Keep in mind, that I may or may not know what we’re talking about, so you may need to spend more time explaining something to me than just doing it and then running it by me later…. but God help you if you didn’t include me at the beginning of the screen design.

Ego is the first casualty of true productivity.

People don’t remember what they last talked about in the last meeting. Including myself.

Most people don’t remember what day it is, or what they had for breakfast. I for one have a horrible memory when it comes to what I’ve done, what I say I’m going to do and what I’ve truly allready done. Thank God we live in a time where you can punch magic numbers and todos into a fancy computer and out spits what you’re brain needs to worry about for that day. I tend to think that most people are like this too. Psychologists have found that multitasking is a bunch of bunk. Your brain can only store so much stuff. In Psychology there’s two types of memory, there’s short term memory and long term memory. Long term memory is what you fundamentally store the how of what you are doing on a project, how you’re planning on doing your job. The short term stores the what you’re going to do on your job.

When you have a lot of meetings, it’s like a faraday cage on your brain. Short term and long term memories start to cross wires, you forget what day it is, you wear the wrong shoes to work, you forget to send your Dad that Father’s Day Card and you work through lunch. Let’s stop the cycle, and remember our Dads this year when Father’s Day rolls around.

95 percent of the time, the agenda is either sent out 10 minutes before the meeting, and it’s a template of what you saw the previous week and the crap you’ve allready addressed isn’t updated and why didn’t they update this thing and what the crap do we all do here and Ahhhhhhh!!

We live in a culture in this country that likes to say that we value time. We value time, and we like to have a lot of it to make and do things and go on vacations and play with our kids. We plan and make time for the things we care about. You wouldn’t miss your son’s little league game for anything in the world, you’d probably hire a donkey and a sherpa mountain guide to get you there if your car broke down…

When we go on vacation, my wife does most of the planning. She’ll schedule the appointments to the spa, she’ll make the reservations to the hotel and do practically everything. All I have to do is go. This, among 10,000 other things I can think of, is the reason why she’s the greatest, most amazing wife in the word. Love you, honey.

So, if we do all this planning at the macro level, to go to our son’s little league games, to cut the grass on a saturday, to go with our friends to the movies once a month, to meet up with our neighbors after the crazy summer season: why in the world don’t we plan out our time in meetings a little better?

95 percent of the time I get a canned agenda that will have what we need to talk about, and what we’ve covered. I’m sorry, but if this has NOT changed, there’s no reason to meet. Combine this, with the fact that people don’t remember things, and it’s a deadly combination. You spend most of your time convincing the people around you that, “We’ve already discussed this.” or that, “I need to do this before that can happen, I told you that already.”

———

So that’s it, that’s why I’m boycotting meetings at work. Don’t get me wrong, I love people. In the time I won’t be in meetings I’ll be answering emails, scheduling mini meetings, scheduling working sessions with 3 or 4 people or hanging out. After all, we’re still a social people.

What’s your take on meetings? Do you run effective ones?

If you found this blog post entertaining, enlightening or irritating, tell me! I’m looking for feedback. If you did like it, post it on some social media site somewhere, that’s always fun.