Meetings were a mystery to me when I made my entry into the corporate world. I saw my leaders gather all day long in small glass cubicles that ran along the perimeter of our work place. With his laptop in one hand and notebook in the other, my boss would scurry across the floor from one meeting to another. His calendar on Microsoft outlook, which was full of pink and blue lines, had to be consulted every time we made a plea to see him. When we juniors were called to attend one of these meeting, especially the one with the departmental head, we would walk around with an air of superiority for the next two days. While we had no clue what was going on, we believed we had witnessed one of greatest moments in the history of the company. It seemed the work we did on the floor was quite mundane and inconsequential in comparison to the great strategies being devised in these glass door rooms. The increase in number of meetings was directly proportional to your growth in the organisation.
Now having spent more than 10 years in the corporate world, meetings are still a mystery to me and I still have no clue what is going on. The more I attend them, the more they confuse me. They have slowly turned from a symbol of privilege to a haunting nightmare. Only if there was ‘snooze forever’ button. There are days when I spend all my time in these glass rooms, only to realise later that the real consequential work is yet to begin. But the corporate world thrives on these meetings. Endless cups of coffee are consumed over projectors and power point presentations. These meetings remain a big contributor to our economy. Half the workforce would be rendered unemployed if there are no meetings to attend.
Having attended a variety of long, short, noisy, silent and loud meetings in my career, there was no way I could stop my self from observing a few stereotypes. Any resemblance to reality may not be pure coincidence
The ‘only-I-will-speak’ meeting – These are generally called by bosses who love to give ‘gyan’. Every now and then, their failure to find an audience for their discourse could lead to random calendar invites at odd times with an agenda that remains hidden even after the meeting has ended. Any remarks from the attendees could be met with visible irritation. Hence, the best way to get through one of these is to fixate your eyes either on the floor or on the ceiling and utilize the time to introspect why your ex. left you
The ‘meeting-to-decide-agenda-for-another-meeting’ – These typically happen when foreign client visits are scheduled, and a small error could be dangerous to humanity. There are endless itineraries made and remade, minutely planning every breath and step. There are ppts to be presented, lunches and cocktails to be arranged and floor walks to be rehearsed. Hence, there are more meetings even before the ‘decide-the-agenda-meeting’. The best way to escape these meetings to say that you couldn’t make to the ‘decide-the-menu-for-the-client’ meeting because you had to attend ‘decide-who-will-accompany-client-to-Agra’ meeting, while all you did was have a chai-sutta break. Given the flurry of activity that surrounds these events, no one would ever notice your absence
The ‘shifting-the-goal-post’ meeting – These could happen monthly, quarterly or annually, but the outcome is consistent. Your performance appraisal is the most amusing meeting of all. It is a horror movie disguised as a stand-up comedy, so you don’t know whether to laugh or howl. Your previous to-dos were a part of your imagination, while the boss goes on yapping about a totally surreal list of to-dos you never knew existed. A great remedy to this could be a few shots of tequila before you get into the conversation. You are anyway hallucinating, so why not do it in a happy mood than in a grumpy one!
The ‘who-will-take-the-blame’ meeting – These generally happen after something goes miserably wrong and everyone wants to pass on the blame to someone else. There is shouting and yelling, and no one is listening. A blames B, B blames C, while C blames C without realizing he is blaming himself. Here my friend, you must yell as well. Because if you don’t, you will be the scapegoat. If you do not know how or what to blame, just start rapping the lyrics of your favorite Baadshah song on repeat. If you are lucky and the tea is over, the meeting might just end even before you reach the second stanza
The ‘why-did-we-not-have-a-meeting’ meeting – These generally happen during the lean season when your boss is not occupied with the above-mentioned meetings. It is not easy to overcome the year long addiction, so the meetings cannot stop even if the agenda is hard to find. This can lead to either the meeting category 2 - The ‘meeting-to-decide-agenda-for-another-meeting’ or category 4 - The ‘who-will-take-the-blame’ meeting. This keeps the vicious cycle of the meetings alive
As they say, in every adversity, lies an opportunity. These meetings have made me aware of capabilities I never knew I possessed - I can have ten cups of tea at one go, I can sing Baadshah songs in reverse, I can pointlessly gaze at objects of irrelevance for the longest stretch of time and I can vouch that Ram Gopal Verma can rekindle his imagination with just about three tequila shots before going to bed. Finally, I also know that the third chair from the left in the meeting room in the extreme south-west corner of the fourth floor of my office has a broken leg that makes a squeaking sound every time you bend backwards.
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