“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.”
— author Dave Barry
I concur! In every staff meeting I’ve ever attended, we talked about work instead of actually getting it done.
But those weren’t the only meetings.
Even though, as prosecutors, we were a stand-alone independent local agency, we were still subject to some administrative BS from the State Capitol. In the bowels of every bureaucracy there is an echelon whose sole function seems to be to annoy the productive workers by planning, staging, and requiring attendance at meetings… most of which serve no useful purpose to the attendees. Here are a couple of examples of what we had to endure:
Building security – for those who lacked enough sense to refrain from letting strangers into the secure areas;
Hazardous material management – in case you didn’t learn as a child not to handle items stained with feces, blood and other excretions;
Whenever attending one of these I thought to myself, “If we have employees so clueless they need to be told this, then we have a bigger problem!”
The ever-popular political correctness indoctrination about diversity and sexual harassment.
We were ‘required’ to attend meetings about these topics annually, though the subject matter never changed. Apparently we were perceived by the bureaucrats as lacking retention ability – or they were justifying their existence. Then there were meetings in which the instructors also assume we are illiterate, so they used Powerpoint and read aloud what each slide said – usually in a robotic monotone.
Just how counterproductive are meetings? In describing the nightmare of life as an inmate in Soviet slave labor camps, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said the one good thing about his internment was having the time to think deeply about his life. That was only possible, he wrote,
“Because, and this is the main thing, there were no meetings (Italics in original text) … you are free from all kinds of meetings. Is that not mountain air? ”
A Nobel laureate, who has experienced both, believes meetings are worse than slave labor. That quote should be mandatory reading for every “meeting planner”.
Among the advantages of being retired, and working only part-time, is I now have to attend few meetings. So then why, you ask, am I blathering on about them? Because as I was recently reminded meetings aren’t merely annoying, they have other sinister contexts.
I’m commencing my third year as an adjunct professor. Until joining their ranks I didn’t realize how status-conscience academicians are. On the hierarchy of college teaching, adjuncts are at the bottom of the pecking order — and the work environment reinforces that lowly status.
I discovered inadvertently one way adjuncts are relegated to second-class status is to exclude us from faculty meetings. Without even inquiring it was gratuitously made clear to me that we are neither invited to, nor welcome at, those meetings. Exclusive meetings are like high school cliques – they are a way of saying “We are the cool kids!” But that status BS is lost on me, since I have no desire to attend anyway. It saved me the effort of figuring how to avoid it.
But with this pandemic I have not been able to evade all meetings. I was required to attend one in which the woman presiding relished telling us how to conduct ourselves on campus. Enforcing silly arbitrary rules seems to be what gives her life meaning – reflecting another problem with meetings. They affords some the opportunity to control others.
Now if meetings were just about wasting time, ego trips, and petit tyrants, they’d be bad enough. But they also often produce bad outcomes.
In my experience far better results emerge from informal, spontaneous discussions than organized meetings. It’s amazing how having an agenda, and someone “presiding”, stultifies critical thinking (and creativity).
By far the worst aspect of work meetings is to afford decision makers a way to avoid responsibility for bad results. Blame the committee! After all, hasn’t “It’s not my fault” become a mantra of our society?
“I look all around, and what do I see – a whole lot of people saying don’t blame me” – Don Henley
Meeting, the practical alternative to work!
Gary Beatty
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.
