DailyPost 390
MEETINGS
Meetings has for long been a part of official rigmarole. In most of the private conversations, professionals challenge with candour the utility of meetings and that huge amount of professional working time is generally wasted in them. The cost benefit analysis does not work in favour of these meetings. Even with video conferencing, Skype etc conventional meetings remains the prima donna of official engagements.
The lack of clarity on the job description, of tasks / project at hand, the inability or unwillingness to perform has left meetings as the only tool of supervision, control & execution. It remains the only method to keep energy, vigour, motivation & pressure into circulation, a must for the maintaining timelines & quality for the final accomplishment of organisational goals. The lacunae of organisational goals being a part of organisational culture & thus lack of ownership to deliver on their own has made meetings so profuse.
There is no matrix to calculate the real utility of meetings but there is no denying the fact of loss of time and it not being compensated in any way. The client meetings are generally held in a climate of distrust , each party either trying to extract maximum business mileage out of it or to pull down the competitors or take the client on a different trajectory. It’s not taken as a collaborative exercise for the fulfilment of the same goal. What really goes amiss is positivity & the desire to find best possible solutions.
Institutions like Singularity University does not believe in one off meetings but long sessions of couple of days to find solutions, delineate them and provide the roadmap. Needles to say, documentation is above the global best and they are surging from strength to strength. We live in the age of complex issues, integrated projects in fast paced transformational times and the nature, structure and utility of the meetings should reflect this reality .Organisations need to take a call on the nature of meetings to happen. The days of mechanical meetings are numbered.
MEETINGS AS A TOOL OF OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENT HAS TO REINVENT ITSELF.
Sanjay Sahay