Business executive • MAY 11


Special Feature Meetings from hell


Not everyone runs (or participates in) meetings well. Here Patrick Forsyth puts his tongue firmly in his cheek to highlight the dangers of a quite awful management style, and thus the opportunities to do better!


The team convened here is very important: Mary is our


financial guru and obviously no new plans can be made without involving her – more’s the pity. Not that there seems to be money for anything at present. These may be hard times, but money is for investing in the business, Mary. Your role is not to protect it like a broody mother hen sitting on her eggs. You have to break open the corporate piggy bank occasionally and actually spend a little, well a lot in the case of this project. Mind you that was a good cost-cutting idea that you emailed me about yesterday, we must check what the men in the group think about it. John is here because he will, in his usual fumbling way,


“Well, good morning everyone, I’ve called this meeting for very specific reasons, so let’s get down to business straight away shall we?


F


Patrick Forsyth has contributed several articles to Business Executive. He is a prolific writer on management subjects and consults for governments and corporations world wide.


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irst, let me say that I’m sorry the meeting had to be called at such short notice. But it is urgent, and it is important. I am sorry too that there was confusion about where it


was to be held. The conference room was already booked, well it’s being redecorated actually and I can’t abide the smell of paint. So I was forced to make alternative arrangements; thanks to George for squeezing us all into his office even though it is rather small, I hope you are okay on that stool George. The result of all this is that the meeting is starting nearly half an hour late. I know Harry’s not here yet, but he will just have to catch up when he arrives; something about a school visit he said – some people have no sense of priorities and that seems to apply to Harry more than most; that man’s always ducking and diving – there is another thing I dislike about him – his face. Let’s move on: coffee will be here soon


attempt to project manage any new scheme and Jane, as our human resources expert, will no doubt tell us that health and safety and employment law procedures mean we can’t do anything when we want, how we want or in some cases at all, without risking the wrath of the law, jumping us into a time consuming and expensive employment tribunal or bringing everyone out on strike. You will all remember the fiasco of firing that idiot in research. He disobeyed orders; he was shoddy, constantly late and wasted precious research money. He burnt down the research lab for goodness sake – you can still smell smoke in many parts of the building – but it still took ten months to fire him by the time we had issued all the necessary warnings, initiated the labyrinthine disciplinary procedures and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. He was able to stay on long enough to almost gas his assistant – poor Julie’s still in hospital, I think – and get us blacklisted by the Research Council. It was a bloody disaster and all too typical of how things seem to work nowadays. Anyway, the rest of you know your roles and George, well


I sometimes think you are at every meeting that takes place in the building, indeed I sometimes think you do little else but attend meetings, and here you are again though I’m not sure what you can contribute. And, no George – don’t speak yet – when I want your opinion I’ll give it to you. Right let’s get on. This is potentially an important project.


Well it seems to me to be the only way forward and I cannot recommend it highly enough. There may be other ways of proceeding, and my setting out a plan that we do this is, of course, only a suggestion; though that said I hope you will bear in mind who’s making it. I very much want your input, I want any decision to be a consensus and I want to hear what


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