Ah, meetings the things we do between email and opening spreadsheets. You know who really loves meetings? Americans. There's nothing my American colleagues can't have a meeting about. Let's get on a call, they'll announce if they're feeling really gung ho, to discuss that email. Otherwise, it's a future calendar bomb. There's some teams that practically MIRV my month. None of these meetings really achieve anything other than give people a platform to talk – and it's usually alpha-management types who just have to talk because they're alpha-management types and that's what alpha-management types do, the people that want to be alpha-management types (they always write MBA after their name, makes them easy to spot), and the wafflers. The wafflers, at least, may have a point. Or will have. Probably. The minimum unit of any meeting run by Americans in one hour, of which the first ten minutes will be spent waiting for Sherri to get coffee and bagels and then inevitable technical issues. Oh yeah, and when it finally gets going (I'm going to dial out and dial back in again!) for those on the phone, surround sound background chewing. You ever listen to twelve people eating bagels? It's like listening to a hungry hippopotamus masticate its way through a tyre yard.
The standard outcome for any meeting is another meeting. They self-perpetuate. I sat through a call the other about a product release where the delivery drone simply read everything from the screen. That's a search field. That's the login button. Click this for help. Someone needs fucking help. Honestly, this is stuff I could work out for myself in about five minutes. Or just write it down. A nice simple document that I can read in a few minutes. Job done. Hundreds of people have just saved 55 minutes. I've spent a good chunk of my working life in the US and they truly are the least productive people ever mostly because they simply can't say no to a meeting. I'm harsh when I have power – I expect an agenda, some explanation of why I need to attend, and what outcome we plan to achieve. I personally never book a meeting longer than 30 minutes, and often fifteen. That, at least, focuses attention.
I won't even start on the Town Hall. An event grimmer than a public execution. Of kittens. Do they really think there's any value in explaining the graph projected in front of us? I have a PhD, I can read a bar chart. And it's always delivered by the CFO or some such in a literally death-inducing monotone. The there's happy happy QA with über-leaders from the bridge because they really want to know our opinions. No, really. They don't and anyway, they just get suck-up questions from the wannabe alpha-management types, MBA.
I'm generally not allowed to ask questions, for obvious reasons. I'm not allowed near the bridge. Which is fine, they care about as much about what I think as I do about what they think. There's occasionally glints of entertainment, I was stuck in one of those interminable diversity things the other week (and I've no problem with diversity, but any lack thereof is systemic and not likely to be addressed by Powerpoint) where they were waffling on about 'strong female role models' in management because that's really it isn't it, women just needed to be told – anyway (I know, the irony of waffling) at the end someone raised her hand and asked very politely if a 'role model' could babysit her kids. Cue the most splendid moment of silence from our über boss.
I think our entire modern working life is rubbish.