Meetings Make You Dumber

Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."

Comments

Re:In a perfect world, maybe.

[Dun Malg]

The other thing I always say is, "There should be a law against meetings longer than an hour." Indeed. Someone needs to tell my wife's boss about this. Once a month he schedules something he euphemistically calls a "staff retreat". What it really is is an 8 hour meeting that the entire department staff has to attend. For 8 hours 20-odd people sit around in abject misery as the Department Director (boss) and four Project Directors (sub-bosses) blather on with great enthusiasm about the wonderful things they have planned for the organization. The entire staff is ostensibly there to offer feedback and "have a say" in the goings on, but no suggestions are ever acted upon. The bosses already have their plans worked out. On top of it, half the staff already knows the plans, and the other half work in highly administrative capacities (personnel, financial, etc) for which the mechanics of the projects are highly irrelevant. Really, the "retreats" are a chance for them to strut around and look like bosses, as nothing makes them feel more important than hearing themselves pontificate. Lately her boss has expressed the desire to make the retreats TWO days, as the sub-bosses feel they need more time to talk. I suspect these are the sort of meetings people mean when they say "meetings make you stupid".