Death by Meeting

I spend a lot of time in meetings. A lot. There are several general behaviors that are predictable and occasionally even hilarious.

Repetition of favorite phrases:
I can't tell you how often I use the term "manage by exception." Basically, this is a more professional and self-important way to say, "I don't have the first clue of what the consequence of this decision is going to be, so let's just do it and see what happens." Or, even more succinctly, "Let's wing it."

I'm not the only one. There are myriad examples. I have a colleague who likes to say, in his drawl, "I'll sit here and say…" He sits and says all the time. In fact, he seldom speaks without sitting here, apparently. I for one am glad to hear he is sitting there and saying, because if he was suddenly standing behind me and saying, I'd be alarmed. Sometimes it's good to know the whereabouts of your coworkers.

The same co-worker likes to use the word "spot" like the Smurfs use the word "surf." Its an omni-word. He might be heard to say, "I'm gonna sit here and say that we need to put that spot into that spot right there…" Well said.

There is one guy who likes to say "pursuant to." Everything is pursuant to something else. "Pursuant to the last statement, I'd like to indicate my agreement to that statement." Brilliant.

Yet one more doesn't know the difference between 'agreement' and 'aggreance'. If you're racing to look up the word aggreance, I'll save you the hassle… it doesn't exist. Except to this person, who also likes to use it in its totally made-up plural form. "Bill, I'm in a hundred-percent aggreances with you…"

I am so glad. I was worried that you weren't.

Varying levels of involvement:
I often put conference calls on hold and leave for minutes at a time. On occasion, I come back and throw in a "harumph" a "huzzah" or some such thing. This makes it seem like I've been there the whole time.

Even if I'm not leaving, I seldom don't multitask. I'm on a video conference right now. Writing this. While others can see my video feed. So I have to look and act interested while really doing my own thing. This is quite a feat. It takes a lot of energy to do all that. And I'm typing in "super-quiet mode" so that they can't hear the clacking of the keys.

Oops, here's a part I need to do. I'll be right back.

Ok, false alarm. The guy running the meeting apparently knows my part better than I do. No sweat. This is another example of a trend I notice.

There's always one guy who knows everything - as long as you knew it first:
I may be the one that's supposed to present on something, but there's some guy who always knows more than I do… even if he only is presenting "facts" after I have presented them. That happens a lot with a couple of my coworkers that like to take what I just said and make it their own, often to much ballyhoo and backslapping. I've actually said great things that were then repeated by a coworker and the coworker was told, "great job!"

Indeed.

The dipsy-doodle:
Just yesterday, another senior manager called a conference call, including people in three offices on both sides of our operating footprint. No agenda, just a meeting request. So we call in and the manager says, "Ok, Bill, why don't you get started…"

I knew the general topic of the meeting, but did not know why the meeting was called, what the meeting was to accomplish and by what means those enigmas were supposed to be communicated.

I fumbled through, though the people on my end knew precisely that "we" had no idea why "we" called a meeting. Nothing worse than a group of busy people shooting eye daggers at you because they know you are wasting their time.

I called said co-worker after the fact and said in no uncertain terms, "Don't ever, ever do that again. You call the meeting, you run the meeting. Do it again and I will throw you under the bus so fast you won't know your mama's name."

Hang on… I might need to go for real this time.

I said, "Ok." That's my biggest contribution to the meeting so far. Which brings me to my final point.

The unnecessarily large meeting:
In my world, meetings are attended by approximately 300% more people than need to be there. It is almost like every meeting is treated as though a dying tribal elder is assembling the village to tell his last epic story for the last time. There are scribes, there are people I didn't even know worked for us, there are managers nodding reverently and others looking at the rest of us wondering just what the hell to do.

This makes what could be a 10 minute phone confab between two or three people an hour-long ordeal at the end of which everyone in the room is made to state their unconditional commitment to the cause and their specific take-away.

Incidentally, this is the act of repeating in different words what the first person said, since there was only one thing you could possibly take away from the meeting that is proper to share in a corporate meeting setting.

So, for thirty minutes, twenty-two people in three states are playing the, "I can make what you just said sound better and more important" game. Priceless.

One hour, 10 minutes into this meeting, I have now said, "OK" and "Yes". I wrote a blog post, laughed when appropriate, did my harrumphs and huzzahs, caught up on Twitter, peed, and texted one of my managers, which incidentally, actually accomplished something.

Overall, an above average meeting.