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Meetings are Bad For You
19061969 writes "Though this is obvious to most of us, your PHB's might benefit from knowing that meetings are bad for you. Two psychologists have found evidence that the number of and the time spent in meetings has a detrimental effect on mood. "...a general relationship between meeting load and the employee's level of fatigue and subjective workload was found", write the authors after conducting a diary study. Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Memo from your PHB
We need to have a meeting to discuss these findings!
Oh no... it's the future.
"Perhaps we should be more understanding with our moody bosses?"
Perhaps not. Most meetings are scheduled by said moody bosses because they can't be bothered to read their email or meet one on one with the people who are actually getting work done. Sure, they're busy otherwise, but most of the reason they're busy is because of this meeting culture that equates sitting around a table talking about what you're going to have your minions do (as soon as they get out of the meetings you force them into) with getting code written and products shipped.
The main reason I hate meetings so much is because I get the impression that the only people getting anything out of them are the ones contributing nothing useful to the project in the first place. I don't care if your job is to sit between me and your boss, if you can't keep up with a project you're a part of without dragging me away from my actual work to hand-hold you through what's going on twice a week, you're wasting my time.
That was 90% of the meetings last place I worked, and this accounted for probably half the reason I got fed up with the place and quit before Christmas. Maybe I'm just not cut out to work somewhere that has more than a few employees, and I've never claimed to be a people person, but everybody I talked to felt much the same way, so I feel at least somewhat validated.
Face to face contact is great, but the instances where that face to face contact's value outweighs the cost of herding a bunch of people into a conference room for a chit chat are few and far between when there are deadlines to meet, IMHO.
Game... blouses.
I'm not sure I understand the findings. I know I'm always pleased when my boss "delegates" his full workload to me at a meeting.
This guy's the limit!
Something needs to be done about meetings... Perhaps more laws, counselling, medication... for the children.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I read in Reader's Digest many years ago about a plant manager who loathed meetings. A worker was injured on the job, which prompted a series of long "safety meetings." This propmpted the manager to post signs throughout the plant that read:
Work Safely! Accidents cause Meetings!
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
That's what "Too many" means...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I use to have this at my old job that was posted. Some of the high-ups were not impressed.
Are you Lonely ?
Don't like working on your own ? Hate Making Decisions ?
Then Call a Meeting !!!!
YOU CAN...
SEE people
DRAW Flowcharts
FEEL Important
IMPRESS your collegues
FORM subcommittees
MAKE meaningless recommendations
All on Company Time
MEETINGS
The pratical alternative to work.
I know that most people here work on the "create the product" part of industry, or so it seems, but when you're like me, meetings are a wonderful thing.
I work in sales. The more that I can understand our products, the better of a salesman I can be. I"m not the type of person that will try to make up things because they want products to look good -- instead, I try to be as knowledgeable as I can, because from what I have seen, the more knowledgeable that the buyer sees that I am, the more trusting they are of me, and therefore more willing to buy what I am selling.
I don't spend a large amount of my time in meetings, but at least for me, the meetings that I am a part of, each bit of information that I receive on a product ends up selling at least another few units, so they're great for me.
ArtificialNews.com will one day SAVE YOUR LIFE from evil AI!
when I have meetings with my phd supervisors I usually enjoy them a lot. if you're discussing something with funny, intelligent experts who help you get things done it's not surprising it's enjoying.
so don't blame meetings. I expect most meetings are bad for you just because most *people* are stupid, boring, selfish, ignorant, incompetent and more likely to get in your way than not.
At this meeting was a very old and experienced PhD who knew everything about the project. He regarded the meeting as an opportunity to display his knowledge at length, but had nothing of substance to put forward; after all, it was his design decisions that had caused the mess in the first place. Did I mention he was now a contractor and paid by the hour?
I know nothing about the branch of engineering concerned but I did go and ask the technicians what they thought. They knew the answer perfectly well - the material of a major tubular component was completely underspecified and was leaking gas when the plant got hot. But the PhD refused to accept it.
We didn't exactly draw straws for who would bring it up - but suffice it to say that I ended up with the short one. The result was an hour or so of listening to the worst metallurgical bullshit I have ever endured. But in the end we got our way, the components were replaced, the system started to work, the PhD was let go, (and a year later I was the engineering manager - it seems the MD had been reading the minutes).
Proof if proof were needed that the real reason for meetings is to drive the engineers to the point at which they will risk their jobs and their credibility to find a solution that means they don't have to go to any more meetings.
Pining for the fjords
I work in the IT field (obviously) but I work freelance. Basically, I choose who I work for, so I don't get stuck working under/alongside/above people that I don't personally like. I naturally veer away from meetings. Most meetings I've ever had were a waste of time and they were paying me a phenomenal amount of money to sit and talk, or sometimes even just sit. I don't doubt that meetings can be useful, quite often I've been keen to be involved in ones that affected me directly but been refused (yes, I've actually been politically blocked from attending a meeting with a supplier that would affect my work directly and drastically as I would be in charge of running and maintaining whatever they supplied!).
I've had three hour meetings where the only conclusion and main focus of the chat was what colour green to place on a website background (the website, incidentally, never got off the ground). And they paid me for that time. Now, I don't mind doing stuff that people are paying me for so long as it's something that I can do (I wouldn't say I could fix something if I couldn't), however I try to avoid all meetings now with those same people because it degenerates into a waste of five or more people's time, money and effort, distracts them from the real work and doesn't actually achieve anything we couldn't do with a poll on a webpage. I could make money from sitting in a room and gabbing nonsense but I consider it a real waste of my own time and talent.
One of the reasons that I won't work 9-5, mon-fri, for someone I don't like is that I can call things what they are if people ask. I've never sucked up to a boss in my life because I've never had one. I've had clients, whom I visit initially to determine their needs and then work for, but I avoid "meetings" at all costs.
Meetings are generally without any sort of focus, any conclusions, any change of opinions. They usually are either explaining things that people don't need to understand ("the network is broke, we're fixing it, it'll take a day and cost us X amount of money" is a perfectly good explanation for someone who's not technically minded), letting people spread responsibility for difficult decisions (or even just a comfort blanket for those same decision-makers) and attempts at micro-managing things that those people just don't understand.
If you have a group of colleagues who are all working on very intertwined things, they will form their own meeting either 1-1 or in small groups. They'll have to, and they'll do it a damn sight better than you organising a meeting for them all to check up with you. If you are managing people whose job you could not do yourself, stay out of their way. Maybe find them once a month or so, just to check that everything's working and that you're aware of any major problems. You hire people into a job to do that job, not to make them spend hours in a meeting explaining things they learned twenty years ago to you because you know nothing about that area.
I find that nonsensical meetings only come about through management. Managed-meetings are rarely productive. Having said that, there is a difference between a meeting and a chat. Chat to your staff, make sure they are okay, make sure things are on track, congratulate them on a job well done but bow to their expertise. If you invite someone to a meeting, it's because they absolutely HAVE to be there. If you are having a meeting with a IT vendor and you couldn't tell the difference between two products without the salesman's help, you need your IT guy there, to tell you and the vendor exactly what you want and don't want. But then, why are you there in the first place if you don't know what you're buying?
Meetings can be so useful in the right hands, but 99% of the really important decisions are made or can be made when those self-same people pass each other in the corridor, or pop into each other's office/cubicle/cupboard to chat. That way, there's also no problem with disturbing each other from important work (they won't chat
I don't know if you noticed, but the author of the Guardian piece is Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, a publication which looks at genuine research in a mocking sort of way. They award the IgNobel Prizes for research which "cannot or should not be respeated". Abrahams books are absolutely classic.
of course, biting monkeys is not to everyone's taste - Konrad Lorenz