How to run an Ineffective Meeting
In a fat manufacturing environment a lot of time is taken up in ineffective meetings. In order for these meetings to be adequately ineffective, there are some simple rules to follow…
1. Ensure there is no specific agenda or goal
People should not have a reason to be prepared and instead come to the meeting with at best a vague idea of what the meeting is about. Invitees typically ask themselves why they have been invited. Not having a specific agenda or aim helps to ensure the meeting takes a random path and removes the ownership on the person chairing the meeting to steer it in a particular direction.
2. Do not indicate the whereabouts of the meeting on the meeting invitation.
This will test the initiative of the invitees to find out for where the meeting is and also test their commitment to turning up. If a phone call is not received asking where the meeting is being held, the invitee either has no intention of attending or has simply forgot there was one.
3. Arrive late by at least 5-10 mins.
If you are an invitee ensure you do not turn up on time unless you want to waste time at the start of the meeting sitting around waiting for others to turn up. Staggering arrival times by 5-10 minute intervals ensures the meeting drags on for as long as possible, thus providing a welcome break from the daily fire-fighting that arises from not having enough time during the day to deal with the root causes of problems, due to being tied up in meetings.
4. Do not keep track of time
With any luck, the late arrival of invitees and the lack of agenda will have resulted in a random discussion of issues that are causing personal grief to each individual present, possibly related to the subject of the meeting. By not keeping track of time, you will hopefully run out of it before needing to gain a consensus on a solution to a problem or agreeing and assigning actions. This will typically leave a minute or so to agree on reconvening at a later date to repeat the process over again.
5. Avoid taking responsibility for anything whatsoever
If one absolutely must accept responsibility for doing something, this does not mean that any action is expected to be carried out. Instead simply ensure an excuse is ready for the follow up meeting, should there be one.
6. Allocate any actions where possible to anyone not present in the meeting
As a priority actions should be allocated to invitees not present as a punishment for not turning up. The flip side to this is that the actions will never be carried out as the action owners will always state that they weren’t present in the meeting and thus couldn’t have agreed any commitment to this action.
7. Do not set any deadlines
This is to ensure that any follow up meeting is simply a review of actions that have not yet been carried out by non present members.
8. Do not inform invitees if the meeting has been cancelled
Those, if any, who intended to come to the meeting will call to find out where the meeting is, at which time you can inform them that it’s cancelled, perhaps due to unavailability of a meeting room.
9. Start a meeting within a meeting
Several mini-ineffective meetings can be held within a larger ineffective meeting if desired. This optimises disruption and maximises confusion.
10. Curve balls and tangents
These can often be thrown into the mix, say for example if the meeting accidentally starts to adopt a direction and head towards a decision or call for action.
11. Do not record or issue minutes
Always assume someone else is taking the minutes from the meeting. In this way no minutes will be taken. Notes can be taken for personal use, which can later be substituted by creative doodles as the meeting fails to address anything of interest. In no circumstances should any notes relating to agreed actions or deadlines be distributed to participants. This enables denial of ever having agreed to doing something at the follow up meeting.
The after effects of a successfully ineffective meeting may manifest themselves in the following ways:
Headache
Temporary tinitus
Sore throat
Cold sweats
Hot flushes
Temporary dyslexia
Palpitations
Teeth grinding
Depression
More tips on running ineffective meetings can be found here.
