Meetings for the sake of meetings

You try to get in touch with any senior functionary in either private companies or among government officials: Nearly 90 per cent of the time, you will be told that he is “in a meeting”. If the private secretary of the functionary is trained to be polite to callers, he will offer to take down your name and number and have you called back when the functionary is back in the room. In my experience, though, he doesn't keep his promise 100 per cent of the time!

If the private secretary is rude and boorish, he will curtly ask you to call later and abruptly disconnect.

What is intriguing is that it is the same rigmarole a caller in urgent need of help or advice is subjected to throughout the eight hours of a working day — everyone is in meetings, meetings, meetings! Multiply the number of meetings by the number of functionaries from the top to the operational level, and you will get an astronomical figure.

If the assumption is that meetings are meant to bring about greater team work, better coordination, higher productivity and faster completion of tasks, perish the thought! If, from the standpoint of the average citizen, customer or consumer, the result is the same with or without meetings, then why hold them at all?

ADDICTIVE STRANGLEHOLD

The only person I have known in the annals of administration and management to have hit upon the idea of curbing the itch at least among government officials to convene meetings at a pinch, at a sneeze or, if you will, at the drop of a hat, was India's second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Almost within a couple of weeks of taking charge, he promulgated an order that meetings should be called only when absolutely essential and unavoidable, and that, in any event, Wednesdays should be observed as “meetingless days”, so that officials could concentrate on disposal of pending files and be accessible to those in need of their help and advice.

I was then in the Union Home Ministry and could see consternation and distress writ large on every official's face.

What! No meetings? How's that possible? Just as cockroaches lie low after the spraying of insecticides and crawl back from the woodwork after a few days, the officials too went back to their old ways, first surreptitiously, and later, openly, and soon it was business as usual. Such is the addictive stranglehold of meetings.

Does it mean that meetings are a waste of time and to be banned altogether? No. Meetings do have a place in organisations, so long as they conform to certain important criteria.

First, the person calling the meeting should be clear about why he wants the meeting, and what exactly he wants to get out of it. Second, it should be conducted in a crisp and mutually reinforcing fashion, in the sense of being focused on the matter or problem at hand.

Third, the action points should be unambiguously and succinctly spelt out in terms of the nature and scope, means to be employed and timeline to be adhered to, and the names and designations of the persons specifically made responsible for carrying them out.

FOLLOW-UP ACTION

Fourth, close on the heels of the meeting, the decisions taken and tasks assigned as above should be conveyed in a pithy, punchy and precise manner to all participants.

Finally, by way of enforcing follow-up action, the convenor of the meeting should make sure that compliance reports from the participants reach him within the timelines, giving convincing reasons for under-performance, if any.

In short, a well-conducted meeting used as a tool to instil efficiency and accountability is an integral part of the management process.

Interestingly, research findings published on May 18 in the Strategy+Business web site also confirm that “it is more important to have fewer bad meetings than it is to have more good ones, and that everything depends on the quality of meetings: Teams that interact better — communicate in a focused way about problems, stick to the appropriate agenda, and volunteer to take action — accomplish their goals effectively and enhance organisational performance.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri's order calling for meetingless days still has its own value as it makes life happy and easy for citizens.

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