August 30, 2005

Spinning your wheels for fun.

Here's one of the biggest ever annoyances you'll ever have to face as an employee or small business owner. Meetings. Everyone wants to meet. Sometimes meetings are useful and can accomplish a lot. Sometimes you'll meet about the most inane and irrelevant things. But you go and meet. Because you have to.

If you really are concerned about meetings where you don't spin your wheels, you should check out this article and stop reading here. I am talking about anti-efficiency. When there is a good reason to just sit back, spin away and watch it come undone. Why? Because it's funny, because you have no choice and because you need a break.

Some excerpts from the article mentioned above:

"Before you schedule a meeting, think about the potential results of getting everyone together. Will the results justify the cost of the meeting?" Sure, I suppose you could do that, or in case you want to just look like you know what you are doing, learn some words and expressions that mean noting and sprinkle liberally in the meeting. Here are some useful and completely irrelevant expressions that will make you look like you know what's going on and make people ask you for input: "reinvent out-of-the-box metrics", "matrix scalable supply-chains", "facilitate open-source deliverables" and my favorite: "verticals". These priceless gems will make you visible and guarantee you a raise if used appropriately. Careful though, meetings are a lot like comedy. Timing and delivery is everything.

"I have found that the fewer people there are involved, the more efficient the meeting." Sure. So, what you do for a good wheel spinning exercise is invite everyone. And make sure you have an agenda that gives a voice to the least relevant player on the project. This way you are guaranteed to humorously waste at least an hour. Make sure though that this person is in a supervisory position. They will not resist the urge to make comments, take control and confuse the issue.

"Do "types" emerge in your meetings? Every group gathering will bring out different types: the person who talks just to get air time, whether or not the input is valid; the parrot who repeats others to get credit for good ideas; the quiet one who never speaks at all." Oh, types. That's adorable. Take notes, see who are the "types" and store the list in a safe place. These are the people that will give you a well deserved wheel spinning vacation from work, reality and sanity. Your only responsibility is to use this power wisely and call on the "types" with great care to insure maximum wheel spinning time.

"Is meeting follow-up more work than it's worth? Do you insist on a meeting report to tell everyone what happened?" This is key. You must follow up. You absolutely must share your wheel spinning with everyone and take as much time of their day with irrelevant emails. Also, be sure to "take it off-line" with one person or another. Your boss preferably. I find that bosses love to taken "off-line". Shows that you are involved and want to share important observations as a sideline to a bigger conversation. Looks like you care.