The annoying thing about people who’ve just completed their MBAs, some obscure certification or random training course, is that when they return to work they enthusiastically, but naively, want to implement everything they’ve just leant by next Thursday. Colleagues just back from the “Manage More Effective Meetings” course want to have agendas for any meeting including the one we had to decide what we’re wearing for Steve’s fancy dress party next weekend. I was chastised for not “speaking through the Chairperson” when I called dibs on Batman. Nervous, shy types just back from “Assertiveness Training” want to say no to everything to avoid being taken advantage of. I’ve just come up with a clever way to stop the nervous, shy types from coming to Steve’s fancy dress: ask them! They’re now obliged to say no! How assertive they are!

But recently, I’ve noticed that everyone back from training courses and MBA classes all want to do SWOT analyses. It’s as if they’ve run out of analysis tools to teach, so lecturers are just giving up after Chapter One and leaving it at SWOT. For those of you that don’t have a business degree, been to the company training facility or got your job as a result of nepotism, SWOT is an analysis tool, used to evaluate the relative Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a particular strategy, situation or choice. So, armed with only this tool, every Huey, Dewey, and Louie wants to do a SWOT at every opportunity. If they could complete a SWOT analysis on the usage of Post-It notes in the office they would. When the only tool you have is a hammer…

So I’ve decided to do a SWOT analysis of doing a SWOT analysis:

Strengths	Weaknesses
Ingenious way to waste an hour or two, under the guise of soliciting ideas and encouraging participation, even though you’ve made a decision already. Great way to answer MBA assignments that specify the length of response required: draw a square that takes up a whole page and then fill in each SWOT heading as briefly as you please. Volunteer the person with the neatest writing to record the analysis on the flipchart, leaving you free to nap at the back of the room. Ask them to use different colours for each section. As with self-appraisals, the list of strengths is usually quite delusional but makes for a very entertaining read.	Not wanting to go against the group, preface anything that should go in this section with “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here…” Everything’s anecdotal; the guests on Oprah could have produced a similar effort. There’s always very little to say in this section…
Opportunities	Threats
This is where the marketers go bananas. Realism often goes out the window in this section. Someone will try to equate the problem being solved with things Thomas Edison, Einstein or Helen Keller have overcome, even if the problem is drafting a new promotional brochure for the company’s medical aid.	It gives the office empty vessel an opportunity to sprout vacuous drivel for an hour. Someone’s probably going to lose the flipchart paper, meaning we’re going to have make it all up again for the PowerPoint presentation to senior management. Boredom. Are we finished with this yet? On completion, you may need to go out and do some proper analysis.

I’m finding it very difficult to get anything useful done at the office. And seeing that I bill by the hour, this is proving to be as annoying as a VIP convoy bludgeoning its way through peak hour traffic (being late for a soccer game isn’t an emergency). Team members are taking leave every second day to watch soccer games, attendance at my meetings is falling as people leave work early, despite me offering to brand only three people per meeting as work-shy lazy bastards (WLBs) and those that do make it to the meetings arrive late, offering flimsy excuses like “We were stuck in traffic”. Apparently, while stuck in traffic this group of WLBs were attacked by a gang of Argentineans fans who mercilessly painted the Argentinean flag on their faces. Given this complete abandonment of responsibility, I’ve decided to exact my own revenge as only a reluctant management consultant can. So, here are my Top Ten Ways to Annoy Soccer Fans at Work:

10.	Start by cancelling people’s leave. Then offer a “compromise” by insisting that the person complete all of their deliverables before they leave. They’ll work frantically, you’ll get what you want and they’ll even thank you for being kind enough to let them have the day off. Now that’s what I call win-win!
9.	Tell people that they shouldn’t expect to progress very far in the organisation if they insist on dressing so unprofessionally. Do this on Football Fridays.
8.	Schedule a performance appraisal at 16:30, just before the Brazil vs. Portugal kick off. Allude to a potential bonus to ensure that the football nut attends. If he doesn’t then at least you have a handy excuse not to give him a bonus. Failing to attend your own performance appraisal is a serious matter indeed.
7.	Everyone who misses work over the next few weeks has to attend a compulsory Basel II refresher training course, not forgetting the mandatory four hour, Friday afternoon competence assessment.
6.	Anyone caught blowing a vuvuzela during office hours will be sent to man European broadcasters’ call centres, fielding calls from their boring viewers complaining about the incessant drone of the vuvuzelas heard during soccer matches.
5.	Try the ever reliable fire drill. People who aren’t at the assembly point and whose whereabouts can’t be verified because they’re attending a soccer match will be assumed to have perished in the “fire” and will be deleted off the payroll system. These individuals will have to reapply for their positions.
4.	Switch off all the TVs in the building. People are very compliant; very few of the herd will think to just switch them back on again.
3.	Allow access to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for just a day. Once word spreads, droves will climb on the internet, trying to take advantage of this momentary lapse of corporate reason. Then, on days of your choosing, discipline staff members for accessing unauthorised sites during work hours. Savour the irony by recording these disciplinary hearings and posting them YouTube.
2.	Replace Football Fridays with You’ve Been Made Redundant Mondays, followed by Time to Work Tuesdays, Whine to HR Wednesdays, Tell Someone Who Cares Thursdays, You’re Fired Fridays and my personal favourite, Guess Who’s Working This Weekend Saturdays and Sundays!
1.	Armed with a leather folder and wearing a suit and a tie, walk up to groups of people sitting in pause areas watching the soccer and ask them for their employee numbers. This works really well in retail banks, government departments and France.

Maintaining a laser-like focus, 100% commitment and marathon runner endurance and motivation is very difficult for the average employee, and let’s be honest most employees are below average. So is it any wonder that every now and then, and by that I mean regularly, people at work will procrastinate. In the interests of being both helpful and educational here’s my Top Ten Tips for Procrastinating at Work:

10.	Build a fancy Excel spreadsheet for a less than important, perhaps even random, reason. How about a spreadsheet used to calculate how many days, hours and minutes left until Friday/next Public Holiday/Leave/release date of the next Jessica Alba movie? Try adding some informative graphs and possibly even write a macro to refresh the sheet intra-day. If you don’t know how to write a macro, now might be a good time to learn… using Microsoft’s ever so unhelpful Help files.
9.	As part of your personal Back-up and Disaster Recovery Plan, back up your PC to a shared drive and a DVD. Now, you can’t possibly work on your computer while it’s busy backing up – that would just be inviting unnecessary risk into the organisation! Go grab a cup of coffee instead, it’s far less risky.
8.	Schedule a one-on-one meeting with one of your minions… I mean employees. Explain that sometime we’re so busy that we don’t get a chance to connect as people. Then encourage said employee to discuss how they’re doing at work and how they like working for you. Use the time perfect your “meditating with eyes open” technique while your valuable team member blabbers on and on.
7.	Surf the intranet site. Open organisation charts, read HR policy documentation and visit random department’s intranet sites to see what boring things they do and then lurk by checking out their annual teambuilding photos.
6.	Adopt that powerful management technique, as used by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, founders of the rather cleverly named Hewlett-Packard (I wonder if they considered Bill-Dave?), Management by Walking Around, rather cleverly abbreviated to MBWA. This genius technique can be achieved by simply… well… by simply walking around. Tom Peters would be so proud.
5.	Hire a consultant and get them to do whatever you were meant to do. Let’s face it, they’ll probably do a better job and get it done in half the time. They may cost more per hour than your annual bonus but that seems like a fair price to pay to organise the office barbeque this Friday.
4.	Print a one hundred page document and then go and stand at the printer while you wait for your tome to be printed. Bonus tip: Try and time your printing to coincide with the paper or the toner running out. The latter is preferable because it now means you have to go find a replacement which may mean going to another floor… in another building where there’s no guarantee that they even have the same model of printer as you, let alone the same cartridge. It’s a risk that you’re willing to take.
3.	Attend a meeting, get angry and get the meeting postponed for a really trivial, but pseudo-important reason. For example, complain that all the actions from the last meeting have not been completed. Storm out the meeting room, but not before ranting that “If this is the kind of attitude that people take in this team, then there’s really no point in having a follow-up meeting. I’ve really got far more important things to do than to waste my time discussing what should have been finished last week.” Feel free to grab another latte.
2.	Participate in a fire drill… even if it’s not your company. Just for entertainment value, wear a brightly coloured bib and pretend to be an emergency official. Scold people for not taking the fire drill seriously.
1.	Call the employee assistance line and ask for help with… procrastination!

Got any other ideas for procrastinating at the office? Let me know at diary@jeetesh.net See you next week.

One of the most important tools in the arsenal of a professional meeting-attendee such as myself is an Agenda. I do, of course, mean ‘agenda’ as in a list or outline of things to be considered or done, as opposed to ‘agenda’ insinuating an underlying often ideological plan or program.[1] However, after a recent meeting that I attended, one can be forgiven for confusing the two definitions. I received the meeting’s agenda with the invitation and was amazed to proceed through all the agenda items without actually discussing the literal agenda items. Thus, I present my version of a meeting agenda, what it says and what it really means:

Potter Weasley Granger & Associates

Audit Tax Advisory Magic

Company Meeting – Agenda

Date:	15 March 2010 (A company meeting on a Monday? You must be joking!)
Time:	14:00 to 16:00 (After lunch? Seriously? Nap time here we come.)
Venue:	Gryffindor Boardroom (The boardroom without any aircon? Now you’re just killing me!)
Chairperson:	H. Potter (That self-obsessed, short-tempered, long-winded, big-headed, small-minded, one-sided, two-faced, ear infection of a man!)

Agenda Items

No.	Item	Responsible	Duration
1.	Welcome and apologies (This meeting is about as welcoming as a sign outside a building that say “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the snap of latex rubber gloves at US Customs or a Roger Waters and Pink Floyd reunion. In fact, it’s me that should apologise to my family, friends, mentors and educators for having failed them so miserably to have only risen to the lowly heights that is this company, this position and this meeting. I wonder if there’s going to be biscuits?)	H. Potter	5 min
2.	Minutes of the previous meeting (The minutes of the previous meeting will always be accepted because no one ever reads them.)	H. Potter	5 min
3.	Action items from previous meeting (There were actions from the previous meeting?)	H. Potter	5 min (15 minutes in and we haven’t even done anything yet)
4.	New Projects (Oh God, you know what this means? Someone’s been blue sky thinking, brainstorming, or even worse, reading. Now we’ll have to implement another ludicrous idea, like trying to teach clients about GAAP using only a laminated card and interpretive dance. Note to self: blacklist Amazon.com)	R. Weasley	30 min
5.	Budget (A fruitless discussion where we’ll present our budgets, which were merely last year’s budget multiplied by 1.1. Tempers will flare over the rising numbers and why some budgets are approved, such as the GAAP Interpretative Dance Project, while others are cut, such as the bonus pool, business class travel and the employee assistance program. All budgets will then be cut by 10%.)	L. Voldemort	45 min
6.	Marketing Feedback (Great, another fifteen minute discussion about why we need a new logo and a new font.)	H. Granger	15 min
7.	Company Teambuilding Event (There’s a light at the end of the tunnel! A quick chat about another pointless excuse to spend a day out the office under the pretext of building a better team. Just agree to the option that’s outdoors, has a bar and comes with a free T-shirt that I can use in the garden and then we’re done!)	D. Mentor	5 min
8.	General (Brace yourself. All the inane, tedious and meaningless comments will now come out, in an attempt to create an illusion of value and contribution. The end is nigh.)	H. Potter	5 min (the Lord have mercy)
9.	Date and time of next meeting (Don’t people learn? After the pain that was this meeting, they now want another one?)	H. Potter	5 min (at last!)

---

[1] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ , 14 March 2010

After two weeks of jet-setting, I can’t say that I’m entirely thrilled to be back at the office again. ‘Underwhelmed’ might be a better description of how I feel, however that may just be the jet lag. I was confident that I would have shrugged off the effects of jet lag by now. Sadly, I’m still struggling to fall asleep at a reasonable hour and am now trying to bore myself to blissful slumber by watching CNBC at one in the morning. On the bright side though, there are some very interesting programs about dinosaurs at that time on the National Geographic channel. The other understandable but bizarre side effect of jet lag is that I find myself getting really hungry at four in the afternoon, which now makes dinner at eight feel like the midnight munchies! The good news is that the Academy Awards ceremony is being broadcast tonight, so I should be fast asleep by about 19:45.

Getting back to work can be a very traumatic experience indeed. Firstly, the traffic jolts you back to reality as you realise that while you’ve been partying it up elsewhere, everyone else has been engaging in morning skirmishes, just trying to get to their place of work on time and one piece. Just thirty minutes into your journey and you’re already cussing, flipping the bird and brandishing your firearms (Joburg drivers only)… and that’s just to your kids in the back seat.

If the team that you work with is a group of motivated, intelligent and mature individuals, then they probably did not mobilise in your absence to perpetrate a grand, practical joke at your expense. Given that I’m the one uncomfortably adjusting people’s office chairs when they leave their desks it was to be expected that I would be the victim for a change. So it was unsurprising to see all the contents of my cubicle relocated to the previously empty cubicle behind me. I was impressed by the attention to detail because they moved everything, including my pot plant John Kenneth Galbraith, and re-assembled the whole lot in the new cubicle, in exactly the same, obsessive compulsive way that I usually arrange my cubicle. Of course, it would have been far more impressive if they reconstructed my cubicle in the foyer of the building, the car park or the canteen. Amateurs! Perhaps I shouldn’t have included that genius idea here, because guess where I my cubicle’s going to be the next time I go on holiday?

The next reality check, the final nail in the coffin that was your delightful holiday, is to turn off your Out of Office Assistant. I don’t know why Microsoft calls it an “Assistant”. Maybe they’re seeing “Assistant” in the same context as Assisted Suicide? I could be wrong. But there are few things more depressing than having to click on the option “I am currently In the Office”. I’ve always felt that to be far too brief and not completely explaining my thoughts on the subject. If at all possible, I’d prefer to go with “It is with a heavy heart and an absent mind that I return to the office. I’ve only been back thirty minutes and I already have a headache. The throbbing of my head is matched only by my general state of lethargy, ambivalence and ennui. But other than that, it’s great to be back.”

Your first meeting back is like a splash of ice cold water in the face! Last week you could take minutes to decide what TV channel to watch at eleven in the morning; now you’re just taking minutes. Last week, communicating with people consisted of checking my text messages. This week it entails reading 363 new e-mail messages, returning far too many voicemails and meeting with people who need to update you on all that’s happened in the last two weeks, including who’s resigned, who’s joined, why we’re now over budget and a comprehensive review of the new stationery requisition form.

And finally, last week my ‘To Do’ list had one item on it, “Enjoy holiday”. Well, two if you count “Annoy sales people at the Apple shop”. This week, item 97 is “Plan next holiday”!

Earlier today I spent a precious half hour of my billable time trying to set-up a meeting. Now we all know how much fun meetings can be: they’re a great way to meet new people, indulge in a free cup of coffee, ask irrelevant and often rhetorical questions before leaving early enough not to get any actions assigned to you. However, setting-up a meeting shouldn’t have to be a painful exercise. You get onto Outlook, add invitees, chose a  meeting room, check availability, perhaps tweak the time a bit to suit your internet surfing habits and then you’re done.

But not today. Today, trying to book a meeting was about as difficult as trying to get the French to work a forty hour work week. The year’s only just begun and people’s diaries are already booked out. An hour is all I need and the first opportunity I can find based on their schedules is the 29^th of January! What can these people possibly be doing this early in the year, apart from trying to impress their colleagues at how busy they’re pretending to be and of course, irritating me?

Further investigation (read intimidation), proved that the guilty WLBs’ (Work-shy, Lazy Bastards) schedules were about as empty as a list of interesting things about Gordon Brown. To “catch-up” they’d booked out their diaries with an all-encompassing entry called “Work” starting at 08:30, finishing at 16:30, everyday for the next two weeks. Amateurs! If you’re going to fake your diary entries you’re going to have to be a little more creative than “Work”! There’s always “Strategy Session”, “Project Prioritisation” and the ever reliable “Performance Review” to substitute for goofing off. And 08:30 to 16:30 is so predictable! You’ve got the mix the times up; a two hour workshop here, an hour team meeting there and maybe even forty five minutes for non-existent travel. I leant the latter from an attorney. 99% of attorneys give the other 1% a bad name.

The second challenge that I faced while struggling to set-up my meeting was trying to get a decent meeting room. There are many factors that influence your choice of meeting room, including obvious ones such as the number of people it can accommodate, availability of a screen, projector, flip chart, white board, working white board pens, that sort of thing. But there are other more subtle reasons for choosing a particular meeting room – a nice view, effective air conditioning, comfy chairs and proximity to the flatscreen TVs so you can check the cricket score in moments of boredom. Some organisations have floors dedicated to Executives, which means any meeting on their floor comes with lunch and snacks, which are always a good idea. An old client had a rule that you could ask for tea, coffee and biscuits to be served at your meeting only if an external party was attending. As we were consultants, we deemed ourselves to be external parties which meant biscuits all year round. It’s the little things that count, even if they are tiny, soggy ginger biscuits.

The names that companies give to their meeting rooms offer an interesting glimpse at their corporate culture. The bland (read Swiss) name their rooms efficiently, combining the floor number and the room number, starting in the northwest corner, proceeding regimentally round the building in a clockwise fashion. South African companies are quite keen on using our flora and fauna to christen our meetings rooms, which does raise an eyebrow when you’ve got back-to-backs in Buffalo, Bush Baby and Bougainvillea.

When another client moved into a new building staff were asked to suggest names for the meeting rooms, with the winning suggestions receiving a prize of dinner for two at an average restaurant (any restaurant that has ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce on its menu). I suggested Bart, Homer and Crusty the Clown, but for some unknown reason didn’t win. Other suggestions included Saturn, Jupiter and Mars (I’ve always wanted to go to Mars for a meeting); Silverstone, Monaco and Imola (you guessed it, suggestion from a grand prix nerd) and Sarbanes, Oxley and GAAP (those goofy auditors).

And the winning meeting room names were… and I promise you this is true: Vision, Mission and Values! Go figure.

The best meeting room names I’ve come across are Steam Room, Hotel Room and Leg Room. No surprise here: advertising agency.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have a Performance Review at 09:00.

Ever been stuck in meeting that just seemed to go on and on for hours, even though it was only scheduled to last an hour? Ever thought about physically harming one of your colleagues who droned on and on about visions, missions, KPAs, KRAs and CSFs? Ever thought that PowerPoint was the work of devil?

Well, you are certainly not alone! So, I present to you my version of a little game to amuse yourself in meetings. By playing a simple game of Bullshit Bingo in meetings you can appear to be paying attention, pretend to be taking notes and of course, feign interest and enthusiasm under the guise of cynical giggles!

Download a copy, send it to your friends or even attach it to the minutes of your meetings. Just print a page and have some fun!

Bullshit Bingo

I’ve added Bullshit Bingo to my new “Coffee Break” page. I’ll be adding some new office amusements there soon, so watch this space!

Over an awful lunch in our awful canteen, one of my colleagues was complaining that another valuable “asset” in the company is being rewarded, even though we all know he’s a Work-shy Lazy Bastard (WLB). Despite the fact that the reward is fairly inconsequential, similar to those quality “employee of the month” frames at your local McDonald’s, it does irk a lot of people that the guy who puts the ‘ass’ in ‘asset’ is being acknowledged for his ephemeral hard work. Yes, this is very unfair. Perhaps as unfair as Jethro Tull winning the 1989 Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal performance instead of Metallica, but the WLB must be doing something right. Somehow or the other, he must be creating the impression that he’s a hard worker, someone who goes the extra mile, someone who’s a quality employee. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game, as my hip hop lovin’, my pants are hanging below my bum, is Metallica a brand of car polish, 23 year old team member always says.

After careful observation of the WLB in its natural habitat, the cubicle farm, I have discovered some really neat ways for you to create the illusion that you’re the business shizness (I may be spending too much time with the 23 year old). With minimal effort, and I really do mean minimal, you too can soon be the proud owner of an “employee of the month” certificate.

Businesses that experience resource constraints (short-staffed if you’re in retail) are always talking about cloning their staff. A pipe dream perhaps, until of course genetically modified crops finally work their magic. But this can now be achieved by simply sending e-mails very early in the morning or late at night. People get these sneaky e-mails and think that you’re really putting in a special effort. Meanwhile, you’re just sitting on your couch, sipping a beer while watching illegally downloaded episodes of “House”. It’s remarkably easy to achieve. For Outlook 2007:

• Open a new mail message
• Click on the ‘Options’ tab
• Click on the ‘Delay Delivery’ icon
• Under the ‘Delivery options’ section, select the time when you would like your e-mail to be sent (try not to choose round numbers, go for something like 02:23)
• Click ‘Close’, then ‘Send’

 

Colleagues will be astonished when they see you’ve been working at 02:23! A hard worker like that is surely deserving of reward.

Another shifty WLB trick is to block book your diary. Simply set-up nondescript sounding meetings with yourself. Things like ‘Budget Meeting, ‘Team Meeting’ or ‘Performance Review’ will all suffice. When people try to book meetings with you, they’ll see how frightfully busy you are. Some will even call to try get a precious hour of your time. Cancel a fake meeting and they’ll love you even more for accommodating their humble meeting in your stressful schedule.

People who have meetings all day are always rushing from place to place. To validate your impenetrable diary, you must do the same. No matter where you are going in the building, even it’s to have a nap in your car, you must get there at pace. Look frustrated if you can, it adds to the effect. If you get stopped by a colleague, tell them that you’d love to chat but you’re running late for a meeting, but he’s more than welcome to book some time in your diary… Another quick tip, leave meetings early, because naturally you have another meeting to rush to!

A quality employee is also a knowledgeable employee. Thus, it’s important for you to demonstrate just how knowledgeable you are. This can be achieved by using a lot of jargon and abbreviations, mentioning random obscurities or by simply making things up. Ask people what they think of the new King III report. Question whether the GL has been updated with the EQTs, the MMs and the NCDs ASAP. Object in meetings because you feel the group just isn’t taking GR58A into account. Wait a week for someone to thank you for raising the important GR58A issue, which thankfully, has now been resolved. Go ahead and start making space for that “employee of the year” award!

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have to send a few e-mails this evening…

“Hi, my name’s Mao… and I’m a workaholic”…

All together now, “Hi Mao!”

The problem with work today is that there’s so much of it. Everyone’s getting in early and leaving late, people are working weekends and much to my irritation, some are even working and eating at their desks! I confess it’s the potential for crumbs and the reality of the Stewed Yak Surprise odour that disturbs me.

And let’s not even begin to discuss the Crackberry-addicted workaholics. These people are permanently affixed to their Blackberry devices. They begin to tick nervously if their “productivity tool” doesn’t vibrate with annoying regularity in meetings. “I’m very important, surely someone must have sent me an e-mail in the last thirty seconds”, even if it’s a pointless cc-All announcement, telling the entire company that the Basel II team is having a team lunch and won’t be available for the rest of the afternoon, thus forcing you to put on hold any pressing Basel II issues you may have had. To demonstrate their omnipotence, their inability to focus and to create the impression that they’re working 24/7, they will reply to every e-mail, no matter how trivial or critical, with a brief, but curt I’m-too-busy-to-use-full-sentences message, such as “Thanx”, “FYI” or my favourite, “Yes”. But I digress… back to excessive amounts of work.

There are some signs that you might be overworked… If your mailbox is over the limit, as a result of work-related e-mails and not videos of someone’s pet dog chasing the light from a torch, clips of Paul Potts or Susan Boyle auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent, amusing Australian beer commercials or let’s face it, porn, then you may be working too hard. If your office and cell phone voicemail are full because of work-related queries and not your bunny-boiling ex wanting to get back together again, then you might be a slave to the grind. And, if your calendar in Outlook is fully booked from eight till five every day because of work-related meetings and not because you booked the time out to complete your tax return (for example…), filled your diary with fake meetings to surreptitiously suggest that you’re busy, preventing people from setting-up meetings with you and artificially dousing yourself with work credibility (known in the cube farm as work-cred; it’s like street-cred, but not as cool), then you may be a corporate drone. Even more sinful is if you have and even plan on attending meetings scheduled on a Friday afternoon. Unless of course, these are faux meetings, designed to throw your colleagues off the scent that you’re actually going for Friday afternoon drinks and you don’t want to invite them:

Subject: Doctor’s Appointment

Venue: Their Offices (News Cafe, corner Gwen Lane and Fredman Drive, Sandton)

Attendees: Dr. Beat; Gloria Estefan

When work begins to impact your personal life, then you’ve really got problems. At university, if you got 51% for an exam, you were considered neglecting your friends. If your handicap is now carpal tunnel syndrome and not a -4, then you’re clearly neglecting your golf buddies. If you refer to your children as Resource01, FTE (Full Time Equivalent) or TBA (To Be Announced) then you’re neglecting your family. If you think ‘The Dark Knight’ is Sir Salman Rushdie, you haven’t been to the movies in a while. If you think ‘Ugly Betty’ works in accounting, then despite this being perfectly true, you’re obviously not watching enough TV. If you’re reading this blog on your Blackberry, while waiting to board a flight back home after spending two weeks in Lagos on business, then someone needs to get a life!

Have a great week and don’t work too hard…

Seven of the most depressing words in business today must be “I think we should have a meeting.” Nothing sucks your will to live faster than these seven words… apart from a call from your friendly, nation-building tax collector of course. Where would we be in human history if it wasn’t for meetings?! Probably a lot further, I would imagine.

Can you picture our caveman ancestors, just before they were about to embark on a hunt? Whilst survival was a daily concern, perhaps they still felt the need to have a quick progress meeting before they hunted down another large land mammal? Nothing too time-consuming… as long as everyone sticks to the agenda.

John gives a quick status update on the location of the woolly mammoths, “They’re much further away than we initially planned”. Paul reports that absenteeism is on the rise since the last sabre-tooth tiger encounter. He suggests running a quick climate survey. George unfortunately has bad news; the clan has lost over 50 shiny stones in Single Pebble Futures. That’s what happens when you’re long in a falling shiny stone market! Ringo ignores everyone and just continues tapping away at his blackberry… literally, it’s just a black berry. Yoko follows with an update from the Gatherer Equality Committee, suggesting that a quota system be implemented, allowing for the allocation of one gatherer for every four hunters per hunt; unless the creature being hunted is really ‘big and scary’, in which case the quota can be temporarily suspended.

Everyone knows that meetings are a grand waste of time, but there are still some quixotic fools who think that somehow meetings can be improved. It’s like trying to make colonoscopy fun – it’s just not going to happen! Clever consultants that no doubt charged some poor client lots and lots of money came up with some great tips for running, better more effective meetings.

Some of their recommendations include:

• Always have an objective for each meeting. Your objective should be to get out of the meeting as soon as possible.
• Have an Agenda. The agenda serves the purpose of sensitising you to each torturous item before the meeting begins. It is also very useful to give you a guide as to how much more hot air you need to tolerate before the meeting is over.
• Timebox the agenda items. First agenda item: let’s stop using the term ‘timebox’. Second, if by some miracle you manage to stick to the time limit for the first agenda item, then you all deserve to celebrate this success and the meeting needs to be adjourned immediately.
• Only one person may speak at a time. However, far too often this is the same person. Introduce a new rule; you ONLY get three chances to speak in a meeting. That’s it! If you exceed your quota, you have to take four actuaries out for lunch. Asking someone to pass the biscuits is considered speaking.
• Meetings should lead to action. This is important and needs to be handled with great diplomacy – the trick is to raise actions that need to be assigned to your fellow colleagues, whilst keeping your action list as bare as possible. If you walk out of that meeting with no actions, then that was quite clearly a successful meeting!

 

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have a meeting to attend…