I love meetings. They're a chance to dayream for long periods of time without feeling guilty about the fact that you're not getting on with your work. This is because as long as you don't open your mouth, people don't actually know what you're thinking. Also, they are vaguely classed as work, so you don't need to worry that you really should be getting on with something more constructive. That's as long as you don't have anything better to do, that is.As the classic workhorse of the faculty - once I resigned from a job and they had to recruit three people to replace me - I always have something to be getting on with. That's why I've learned to get on with different things at different times. I know a man who can't work unless he's at his desk. I go different places at different times, depending on what I need to do. I mark papers in Starbucks. I blog on my settee at home. I prepare lectures on the train (I know you always wondered!) and I conceive groundbreaking, scientific work in my head when I'm in meetings.
One thing I really enjoy in life is explaining to the rest of the world about how the universe works. I recently developed one such explanation in a recent meeting. Someone was going on about something - I can't actually recall the topic, but it was important in the scheme of things - when, suddenly it all made sense to me. There are two types of professional you might come across in mettings. There's the "let's just get through this before I blow my brains out" kind of person and there's the "this meeting is another opportunity for me to let everyone else know how smart I am" kind of person. Now, I'm not against constructive input at all - in fact I think it's quite important. Meetings are mini-events and the artifacts of our organisational culture. They are also particularly good for getting important information across - particularly if you don't bother reading emails. I'm serious! They are also very useful for learning people's names, which can be helpful if you ever need anything.
I walked into one of those intimidating offices and looked for a familiar face. Luckily, I saw immediately a lady that I had been speaking to about once a week since I joined. I appealed to her in a whisper "hi," I mumbled, "I'm looking for Jemima," I smiled.
"I'm Jemima," she answered. I felt instantly a little foolish, but then this reminded me that I really should attend more meetings.
At a recent meeting, I used the opportunity to start passing infantile notes down the auditorium. This was just to pass the time and to build popularity and awareness of my role within the work organisation. As the speaker was fifteen minutes into his presentation and half way through his third voice inflexion, I scribbled a note to a particularly useful lady called Lola, who is frankly one of the few I know that gets things done. It read "Lola - I'll give you £20.00 if you shoot me, right now." The note returned up the row a few moments later with the words "I'm going to need more than that..."
Aside from all this japery, something very constructive came out of the whole environment. Again, as I said before, I got a chance to think, without any sort of other intellectual distraction. One thing I noticed was that everytime an issue was raised, someone at the end of the table decided to chirp up with his observation about the whole thing. However, unlike some people, who discriminate between one point which seems vaguley interesting and another which might be to most people deathly boring and just a waste of time, this particular contributor was trying to somehow break some response-ratio numbers record. It was then that the unifying theory of meeting effectiveness hit me square between the eyes and the following formula immediately took shape in my mind:
[This post was written in 2008 and saved in drafts until now...]
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