Meetings are great, especially in China.

Drink some disgusting alcohol, eat some disgusting food, and meet a few more times before you close the deal.

Back in the West, meetings aren’t much better. I once had to attend mandatory office meetings to watch Dog the Bounty Hunter. Oh, and episodes of The Office, which was more ironic than painful.

Now, Harvard Business Publishing is recommending – in two separate recent articles – attending more meetings, and scheduling meetings with yourself, in order to bear the financial global burden in 2009.

John Baldoni, a leadership consultant, says:

Scaling back makes sense; canceling meetings does not.

Gill Corkindale, an executive coach, says:

I tell all my clients that they are failing themselves, their teams and their organizations if they do not discipline themselves to spend at least one hour (preferably two) each week in a meeting with themselves.

More meetings as a New Year’s resolution? This isn’t exactly conventional wisdom.

Yahoo! Tech’s Christopher Null has suggested, with scientific backing, that “meetings make you stupid”:

A scientific study asked participants to think of as many brands of soft drinks as they could. When part of a group, the participants’ final list was shorter than the lists from participants working alone who were asked to do the same thing.

It would be great to see the results of a follow-up study, investigating what happens when you try to list as many brands of soft drinks as you can during a meeting that you have scheduled with yourself (as opposed to during spontaneous invidual brainstorming).

I’m guessing the results would be worse for the meeting-of-1 group, especially among those who don’t particularly like the group members.

Nonetheless, some of Mr. Baldoni’s and Ms. Corkindale’s insights are worth considering.

For instance, Mr. Baldoni says:

• Now more than ever, senior leaders need to be seen and especially heard by the people who are counting on them for direction and focus.
• Meetings are an important opportunity for senior leaders to address the economic situation as well as reveal plans for how they are coping. Not everything they promise will come to fruition, but they need to present themselves as prepared.
• These get-togethers can provide sales people and vendors with insights into their customers. In turn, customers need to have the opportunity to talk about how they are coping and surviving.

Fair enough.

Ms. Corkindale, meanwhile, suggests the self meeting is controversial, but worthwhile:

I am often met with howls of protest: as leaders, they don’t have the time, it would appear indulgent to others, or they could not justify such a meeting. I disagree. One hour spent in such reflection - on themselves, the issues they face, their people, their career, their boss, their contribution to the organization - is invaluable. Consider how those hours might build into something truly valuable - transformational even - over the space of a week, a month or a year.

Interestingly, Ms. Corkindale suggests many meetings are indeed pointless, but one with yourself is not and should never be canceled.

Unless you’re suddenly forgetting the name of that tasty, caramel colored soda.

    Channel: What's Spicy     |