Critical meetings or just critical of meetings?

The late Milton Berle used to joke that a meeting is a thing that keeps minutes but loses hours.

In full disclosure, I’m not a fan of meetings – never have been, never will.

I’ve worked for several companies that were mired in a meeting culture. One former employer once held meetings to determine exactly when we would schedule meetings.

But that was not the worst of it.

Late one Friday afternoon, we received a group email for an emergency meeting scheduled for 6 pm. Amidst the moans and groans of fellow staffers and frantic calls home to postpone any weekend plans, the CEO entered room and declared that we actually weren’t having a meeting, he just wanted to see how quickly we could assemble in case we did need to have one.

Trust me I can’t make this stuff up.

Amazingly, he escaped the wrath of several people who wanted to do him serious bodily harm – and most of those were women!

My supervisor at my last post – in order to justify his absolute job redundancy - used to mandate weekly meetings for status updates despite that most of the publications were on a monthly editorial schedule and very little changed from week to week.

So it caught my eye when I read in one of the accounting publications, a commentary on the importance of CPA firms holding daily meetings – albeit brief ones – where each staff members gives a brief status report on what they happen to be working on.

So as you might imagine, I was more than a bit skeptical of that philosophy considering my curriculum vitae with regard to meetings. I’ll never question the importance of keeping your colleagues up to speed nor soliciting constructive input should anyone encounter a challenging situation that they may need advice on how to circumvent.

But every day?

Unless your business address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I would question the urgency of daily briefings. At one time I managed 22 people – many of them located in other cities. Each week I would host an all hands on deck conference call to discuss what was on their respective dockets.

I found that worked not only efficiently, but cultivated a sense of teamwork without the grind and repetitiveness of a daily meeting mandate – no matter how brief.

But if daily get-togethers work for some firms then by all means have at it. But a bit of advice, never call them on late Friday afternoon unless your firm has a stellar health plan.