Sleepy thoughts

What is gained from meetings?

Have you ever had to attend meetings? What a silly question indeed, of course one typcially ends up in meetings. In fact, many corporate executives end up attending meetings, after meetings, after meetings... At the end of the day, one is so exhausted by these meetings. As if attending meetings isn't enough, one finds oneself initiating meetings, running meetings and chairing meetings too. Many many hours are spent meeting one another, each other and everybody else.

Does anyone get their work done through these meetings? Honestly, yes! Oh but of course meetings get things done! What a silly question again. One only needs to look at the ring-binder fill with all the minutes to those meetings. Those minutes documented things done, decisions made and directions set. So it is unequivocal to say that meetings get things done, according to those minutes anyway.

oh wait, have we also forgotten how meetings have also evolved to many other forms recently? Now we can have net-meetings, phone conference, video calls, seminars, workshop, offsites, symposiums, etc. Woah... need I say more. yes, i need to. Has anyone come out of a meeting and then end up having to huddle into a small group to complain about the meeting and then attempt to discuss on the issues again? you are not alone; and many a time, such sessions actuallly resolve the issues better than the meetings themselves. yet, such huddles are never documented, just work done and move on.

Is there a moral to this long verbal vomit? if you haven't already concluded, then here it is...

"Meetings - when hours are lost, but minutes are kept!"

let's keep our discussion to that phone call, e-mail, coffee break... get the work done! spend that precious minutes to save that unproductive hours.