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Dr. Strangemeeting
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Strangemeeting
Dr. Strangemeeting (or: how I learned to stop worrying
and enjoy the donuts)
by Geoff Hart
Previously published, in a different form, as: Hart,
G.J. 2001. Dr. Strangemeeting. (or: How I learned
to stop worrying and love the donuts). Intercom July/August:56.
“Their business… was over, … and
they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when
it was understood that nothing more would be established,
discovered or decided today. But… the engines
of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once
set in motion, they took forever to grind to a stop.
[They] proceeded to dutifully chew the scraps of
the agenda until all had been gnawed to nothing-at-all.”—Michael
Swanwick, Stations of the Tide
Experts claim you’ll spend 1500 hours in meetings
during a typical 30-year career—that is, if
you can duck some meetings by looking busy and if
you can retire early. If you duck slowly or plan a
long career, you could easily spend more time in meetings
than you spend working. Fortunately, a little planning
and some quick thinking should let you turn meetings
into a blessing—or at least a tolerable evil.
Here’s how:
- Learn which meetings to avoid: If the “come
join us” memo has no clear statement of purpose—and
that purpose should take 10 or fewer words to state—the
odds of the meeting accomplishing anything useful
decrease drastically as the length of the “mission
statement” increases. Bow out gracefully if
possible. If you really can’t afford to offend
the person who called the meeting, borrow a pager
and ask a friend to page you 5 minutes into the meeting.
Pagers are “cool”, and give you the appearance
of a busy, important person, but best of all, they
provide a valid excuse to leave. “Sorry, Dick!
Jane’s paged me. It must be important.”
- Play “lingo bingo”: Scott Adams, creator
of Dilbert, popularized the phrase “buzzword
bingo”, which works as follows: Before the meeting,
distribute a series of bingo cards based on your company’s
key jargon (e.g., proactive, cutting
edge). Whenever a buzzword emerges, tick it
off on your card. The first person to fill a row
or column wins. Just don’t shout “bingo!” too
loudly, unless you specifically want to earn the speaker’s
wrath. Or try my variant: pounce on anyone who violates
any of several pre-arranged prohibitions, such as
using sentences longer than 20 words, using words
with more than six syllables, or stating that “experts
claim” anything. Failing to inform the speaker
of the rules adds a certain zest to the game.
Correct alternatives to shouting Bingo! include
guffaws, thrown objects, and all-out assaults with
SuperSoaker water guns. (The latter approach works
better at a software development company than at
a Fortune 100 bank. Know thine audience!)
- Make the downtime productive: A meeting is a place
where “minutes are saved and hours are wasted”,
but technical communicators can avoid both problems
by volunteering to record the minutes. The cool thing
about taking the minutes is that you can summarize
hour-long discussions in fewer than 100 words—often
much fewer. All you need to do is record the original
problem statement and the final consensus; if you’ve
missed anything during the discussion, simply ask “so
what’s the consensus?” whenever the conversation
slows, thereby eliminating the need to pay
attention to the actual discussion. Meanwhile, bring
some real work to do on your laptop; the more you
seem to be writing, the more impressed people will
be when you boil all that information down into a
100-word summary. (Taking on the unpopular task of
writing the minutes earns you serious bonus points.
Redeem them at strategic moments.)
- Outlaw PowerPoint: Software improves productivity
only when it accomplishes something you couldn’t
accomplish equally fast manually. Establishing a PowerPoint-free
zone forces speakers to focus on content, not flash,
and that’s surely a good thing.
- Love thy donuts: Donuts offer a trump card once
you learn to savor them. If someone glances
your way and gives you “the look”, you’re
going to be asked to contribute. Grab a mouthful of
your donut just as they gather breath to speak, and
start chewing slowly. Often, they’ll simply
move on to the next victim and let you eat
in peace; if not, a mouthful of fried dough buys
you time to come up with something intelligent to
say.
- Never add to the agenda: The person chairing the
meeting may open the floor to suggestions.
Don’t
make any. After all, it’s their meeting,
not yours. If pressed, offer to e-mail your
suggestions “once
I’ve had time to think through the implications”.
These suggestions may seem seditious at first glance,
but it’s the meetings themselves that pose the
problem: You were hired to work—and meetings
prevent you from doing so. In a way, subverting
meetings is the highest form of loyalty, and that’s
surely a noble thing. Even if they don’t serve
donuts.
©2004–2024 Geoffrey Hart. All rights reserved.