The Hindu Business Line : If you're bored of meetings, read this

HALF the calls to mobiles get the response, "I'm driving. Will call later," and so you hurriedly hang up in the interest of road safety. The other half usually ends up with a curt, irritated reply, "I am in a meeting," and you feel you have sinned. Instead, pity would be more appropriate because most achievers ascend the corporate ladder only to meet their nemesis: `Meetings'.

Bad meetings are `the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business' according to Patrick Lencioni who weaves a business fiction around this theme in Death by Meeting, published by Jossey Bass (www.josseybass.com). If the title sounds ominous, Lencioni has a solution in his fable: "A blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion."

The intro spells the mind of most corporate leaders: "If I didn't have to go to meetings, I'd like my job a lot more." A sad comment on the state of our business culture, writes the author. That is like a surgeon complaining about having to operate on people, is an analogy; or, perhaps, like our batsmen who are so desperate about returning to the pavilion.

"There is simply no substitute for a good meeting — a dynamic, passionate, and focussed engagement — when it comes to extracting the collective wisdom of a team." Why is it important for meetings to be good? Because "bad meetings always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity."

Part one of the book paints a common scenario: A company with a great product, but employees are just chugging along. "They had grown accustomed to the fact that the company would somehow find a way to hit its targets, meet its payroll, and have just enough cushion left over at the end of each year for modest annual raises and a grand summer picnic." No one seeming to worry about the company's fate, though they had grown with the company, and rarely inclined to leave because "their leader was an exceedingly good man."

A simple test, if you wanted to know about employee involvement, is to check whether topics such as television, cricket and weather nudged out `competitive information or industry news' in hallway discussions. It could be misdiagnosis to justify the apparent complacency of employees "as a desire to have balance in their lives."

As the chair, you may be proud of having a great agenda where `every topic is fair game' and also of finishing as scheduled, but your people may be viewing the sessions as `staff infection', and `tedious, wandering affairs' where nothing seemed to get resolved completely at least till you, as the boss, later held court in your office.

Bad meetings are no joke when it comes to impact on the company: They become the birthplace of morale problems, "the single point from which confusion, dissipation, and ultimately, lethargy emanated throughout the organisation", and draining its participants of "their energy and momentum."

The book does not make a case for fewer meetings, because that is a myth. "When properly utilised, meetings are actually time savers." No kidding. "Good meetings provide opportunities to improve execution by accelerating decision making and eliminating the need to revisit issues again and again." A subtle and enormous benefit of good meetings is to reduce "unnecessary repetitive motion and communication in the organisation."

Else, you would have `sneaker time' — the `underestimated black hole' in corporate milieu — the time your executives waste by roaming the halls, reading e-mails, leaving voice mail, all "to clarify issues that should have been made clear during a meeting in the first place."

Worth reading, in your next meeting.

ManageMentor@TheHindu.co.in

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