Leatherhead Matters

Type “Meetings” into Google Search and you get 145million results. Just one measure of how ubiquitous meetings have become. Business meetings can become a way of life and provide a cover for not taking or, deferring decisions.

Meetings can be defined by their Purpose & their Format/Type. The private sector are no angels when it comes to ineffective meetings but, the Public Sector seem to have turned it into a totally dysfunctional business process. If you are not convinced just read this from Civil Serf: The Never Ending Meeting.

(Update 9 March, 2008: The preceding link no longer works because the site has been taken down. The press today are full of “The Hunt for Civil Serf” because the politicos don’t like the revelations!)

Why should this be? Meetings require some thoughtful design on the:

• Purpose of the meeting
• What broad outcomes are desired (these may subsequently be modifies in the meeting)
• Who can contribute to the meeting inputs and reaching a decision. In Public Sector jargon, this means identifying the stakeholders
• What type of meeting best suits the required decision making process.
• Scheduling & location.

For the Public Sector, this is where the problem usually starts. Meetings are called at short notice with little thought about the process. Accountability is diffuse and meetings provide additional cover for individuals/departments unwilling to take a position on a given topic. Usually too little thought goes into what the purpose and measurable outcomes from a meeting should be so the meeting design doesn’t match either the purpose, desired outcomes or, both. Deciding who needs to participate may be almost impossible since, under New Labour, the structure and leadership mapping of the public sector has become truly incomprehensible…. see HERE, as the Government have mixed private and public sector and added layers of quangos.

The consequence is lots of civil servants spend their working days in endless meetings. Their job can literally be defined as “being present in meetings”. It’s boring, frustrating and can literally be humiliating for those sent to a meeting with no understanding or, authority to take a position. It’ a form of abuse which can make meeting participants delusional. They leave these meetings believing that they have done a great days work when in fact they have achieved precisely nada, zero, zilch!

The “real” decisions are taken by those who write the minutes!