Much of corporate life revolves around the MEETING. Executives increasingly find themselves forced to do their jobs in frantic spurts between meetings – breakfast meetings, sales meetings, committee meetings, board meetings, lunch meetings, association meetings, dinner meetings and meetings to plan meetings. Thousands of firms make a handsome living organising them – meetings have become an industry – and one American University now has a degree course in Meeting Planning.
There are obvious advantages in GROUP THINK : one can exchange information and ideas, resolve problems and conflicts and create unity of purpose. A group session has a better chance of being implemented.
A meeting is often regarded as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. The participants kid themselves that a problem has been solved because it has been discussed and minuted.
The length of most meetings is directly related to the number of people present and, as the numbers mount, the chances of achieving anything decline. Often the only people who really ought to be at the meeting are those who send their apologies that they are too busy to attend.
Good meetings do not just happen; they are the result of careful planning, shrewd handling and painstaking follow through. They may be your kind of meetings; if so, you are lucky. They tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
The ten common reasons for holding a business meeting are given below :
1. The executives have nothing else to do.
2. It provides an opportunity to demolish ideas which threaten the status quo.
3.It gives the impression that something is being done.
4. People like to hear the sound of their own voices..
5. The head of the department hates to make decisions on his own.
6. Enthusiasts can be shown the folly of their ways.
7. Blame can be shared.
8. Half a dozen heads are more likely to think up plausible excuses than one.
9. Rivals can be made to look foolish.
10. The top brass wants to see how rising young executives behave in Conference Combat.
Can we see a similarity in the way we run conferences at the Army HQ and elsewhere down the hierarchy ?
Tail Piece
Conference is a management technique by which minutes are kept and hours are thrown away.
– From the Desk of Dean FIET – Brig K Harikumar ,Nov 1996