Friday, June 11, 2010

Meetings, The Bane of Business
  Business piece by Thomas D. Segel

Harlingen, Texas, June 11, 2010:  Anyone who has spent time with me knows I have little love for meetings.  This may seem a bit strange, since I belong to a number of boards, committees and organizations and meetings are their very life-blood.

I think I first started hating meetings in the Marine Corps.  There we would have many inspections, which were really another form of meetings.  Those inspections would unfold in the following manner: The battalion commander would decide to hold an inspection and post the time.  The Sergeant Major would send out the message, but he would tell everyone to be assembled a half hour earlier than the inspection time, because he wanted to be sure everything was correct when the commander arrived.

Now the company commander didn’t want to have his troops look bad in front of the Sergeant Major, so he wanted to look them over a half hour before that man of many stripes came on the scene.

Well, no platoon leader is going to have anything bad said about his troops by the company commander, so he decides to give them a good examination a half hour before the CO is due to show up.

That platoon sergeant knows the platoon leader is a nitpicker, so he tells the troops that he wants them in ranks a half hour before the platoon leader’s inspection.  The squad leader knows he needs to make his points and has his men ready a half hour before the platoon sergeant will exam the squad.  The fire team leader warns his three men what is about to happen, so they can get an early start. And that adds another half hour.

None of this even takes into consideration the personal preparation time the individual needed to get ready for that inspection…or in the case of a large company, the business meeting.

Staff meetings and executive meetings are a lot like that battalion commander’s inspections.  Not only is a lot of extra time consumed when people prepare for their particular segment of the meeting, but the cost of holding such meetings is usually disproportionate to the outcome.  It has been estimated that 80% of what takes place in meetings is not relevant to some if not most of those participating. Multiple psychological studies have proven there is little value to these time consuming, mind draining meetings.

For years I have revered the work of Robert Townsend, the former Avis Rent-A-Car CEO who penned the definitive business handbook “Up The Organization” in 1970.  Such groups as the American Management Association and even the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management have highly recommended this book on business practices.

Among the things Townsend advocated were: * no chairs in the meeting room,  *leaders should take care of the followers first, *executives should set their own hours and vacations, *there should be no reserved parking places, *that personnel and marketing offices should be eliminated, and *there should be an end to executive assistants, nepotism and most executive perks. 

He believes that meetings should only be held when they can result in direct action.  His writings are now considered to be a beacon for positive executive performance at a time when many leadership positions are being held in ill repute.

One of the great things about this computer age is it really cuts down on the need for meetings.  With e-mail and texting, plus cell phone conversations, communication with fellow workers has never been easier.

Now enters into the arena another great-computerized tool.  It is called the “Meeting Miser.”  This small device allows you to calculate in the wages and benefits of everyone attending the meeting.  That gives you a starting figure of the meeting costs.  The device can be attached to a power point screen and allowed to tick away as the meeting progresses.  It will give everyone an exact dollar view of what the true cost of each meeting is to the organization.

Oh yes, in case you are wondering…Today I am not attending a meeting.

Semper Fidelis

Thomas D. Segel
http://thomasdsegel.com/

Posted by Thomas D. Segel on 6/11/10

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