Dialogue: How vacuous are hijacked by fools

By JOE BENNETT

Whenever I ring a friend at a place of work and I am told that he or she is in a meeting I suspect that I am being lied to. Furthermore, I hope that I am being lied to. I would not wish meetings on my friends.

The least nasty kind of meeting is the large-group kind. You can always rely on a loudmouth to hijack such a meeting. This allows everyone else to doodle at the back. The loudmouth wants to ride his hobby horse, a matter of great concern to the loudmouth but of none to anyone else.

It is the chairman's job to push him off that hobby horse. The loudmouth is reluctant to be pushed off and the friction can be fun to watch. When the meeting is adjourned the agenda will be half completed but the loudmouth fully enraged.

A common feature of large-group meetings is the procedure expert. He is always a he and often bearded. He delights in seconding motions, insisting that people speak through the chair, and saying "Point of order, Madam Chairperson". He has no other contribution to make.

Large-group meetings become worse when they are divided into small-group meetings. Sometimes an amusingly overpaid facilitator is employed to facilitate this. With great skill he facilitates the gathering into little groups who each have a subject to "brainstorm".

"Brainstorm" means to come up with ideas. The vogue for brainstorming stems from the belief that there is no such thing as a dumb idea. As it happens there are millions of dumb ideas. They are deemed worthy of attention only in brainstorming sessions.

The group's scribe summarises the dumb ideas with a primary-coloured felt-tip marker on a remarkably large piece of paper.

Then all the little groups are facilitated back together into a large group for what is excitingly known as a plenary session. This is the only extant use of the word plenary. Plenary derives from the Latin plenus meaning full, but plenary sessions are rarely full because during the tea-break several people have snuck off.

At the plenary session the scribe for each of the small groups displays the remarkably large piece of paper and speaks to the ideas on it. Meeting experts say "speaks to the ideas" because only the ideas are listening.

When all the ideas have been spoken to, the facilitator summarises the meeting and sends a security company to collect his fee.

Then someone on a lower salary collects all the remarkably large pieces of paper and stores them in a cupboard for future reference.

Future reference means finding them five years later and throwing them away.

But most meetings are not large-group meetings. They are small-group meetings called by management.

Managers summon their underlings for the purpose of consultation. They wish to stimulate a cooperative and productive workplace environment and to build team spirit.

At the start of the meeting the manager briefly expounds his own point of view. When that hour is over it is the turn of the underlings to expound their points of view. When that five minutes is over, so is the meeting.

Some people like meetings. They see themselves as ideas people. They go from meeting to meeting, sowing ideas in the manner of an insect depositing eggs.

Others do not see them as ideas people. They see them as people who don't do any work.

The most popular topic for discussion at any meeting is the topic that was discussed and not resolved at the last meeting. It is not resolved at this meeting, either.

Cue for the second most popular topic of discussion at meetings, which is the date of the next meeting. This discussion can occupy a remarkably large part of a meeting.

Managers often call meetings to ensure that things are being done. Calling the meeting ensures that, for the duration of the meeting, things stop being done. The people who are attending the meeting know that the things will still have to be done and that the meeting will not affect the way that they are done. It will affect only the amount of time available for getting them done.

In short, meetings are rarely good things. They stop work being done, they arrive at predetermined decisions, they create the worst possible atmosphere for the generation of ideas, they cause resentment among the industrious, they are hijacked by fools and they gratify only the vacuous.

So when I ring a friend at work and am told that I cannot speak to him because he is in a meeting, I hope, for the sake of my friend, that I am being lied to. I hope that the only meeting he is attending is with porcelain or coffee.

And I suspect I am often right.