CIO - Large New Zealand Company - Paid to do Nothing

Less meetings more talk

 
When is a meeting and meeting and when are you just talking to someone?
 
I’m sure years ago when I was younger we didn’t have a tenth of the meetings we have now, but we didn’t just sit there, doing nothing. We talked, asked questions, got opinions and got the job done.
 
As soon as you start using the word “meeting” all of a sudden you are in the realm of agendas, focused thought, prepping for it, etc etc. Now a simple question that a five minute at the desk chat would sort out, becomes a one hour, agenda and minted “meeting” that I now have to spend another hour beforehand prepping for and two after responding to other questions.
 
For example: I have to do some work for a company in South Africa (I’m in the UK) and I need to get a quick understanding of what is needed. Can I just phone the guy for a quick chat? No, I have to prep for a “meeting” tomorrow afternoon, with slides and agendas and all that jazz, just to say “Hi guys, what you want?” A waste of time.
 
I mean, look at what this CIO put in his article: “If I am not in a meeting chances are I am preparing for a meeting, doing the occasional necessary action that comes out of meetings or reading and answering email and occasionally doing some personal research and study. Not a “productive” task there anywhere!”
 
And then says: “I believe meetings are so important that anything we do outside of a meeting should be completely focused on making our meetings more effective”, WHAT!!
 
I think therefore I meeting

 I like the column thanks for sharing, K1W1ONOE. 

Chis, the way I understood the column, the comment "not a productive task there anywhere" is picking up on the perception we have of what producing something is. He is not really meaning the meeting is not productive, quite the contrary.  When you are in meeting, making decisions, guiding work, and most importantly in brainstorming and sharing ideas it is very difficult to perceive the productivity of this meeting as we are used to (in terms of reports being written, reviewed, designs executed, software code written, parts manufactured).  The more tangible products that come up as a result of these meetings will only be seen much later on, and the impact of that meeting in those results somehow melts together with a bunch of other actions that were also important towards that result.

I do agree with Chis on less meetings more talk, and your comment Chris, made me feel "productive" about my work.  I got back from two weeks vacation and I had informal talks with 10 different people on an unscheduled basis along my first day back at work, all talks regarding work related issues, and all of them resulting in guidance towards future outcomes.  Now I can forsee the future outcomes from all of this talking, but whilst I was making the transition from a individual contributor/supervisory role to a manager-executive role, I couldn´t see it so well, and I used to feel frustrated and stressed out at the end of the day that my work had not been "productive" enough.  

Telling the truth, I am still making the transition.....too many years being "productive" and now having to be more "listeningable and talkingable"....

Nara

On a second thought, CEOs could do something (rather than "get payed to do nothing") which is to look more careful and analyse the data regarding critical aspects of their operation.  And when the data is not available demand that it be available.  They must make sure somebody is reading the technical reports and extracting  the critical data out of them,  and passing it on to them, so that the correct technical decisions can be made.  Or else have somebody they can trust (trust on competency specially) to do that for them.

I just look into a year´s of crap data, crap measurement of a critical variable into an important decision for a client.  The client is paying for the measurements but nobody is looking at the data, for over an year!  Or else somebody would have spotted the obvious error a year ago.  Had they done so, the company would have now the reliable data to make a better decision, or better still, would have made the decision a year ago!

It is frustrating.  I see it happening far too often, critical technical issues escalating to catastrophic situations.  As Malcolm Gladwel brillantly writes in "The Tipping Point", small details can produce a dramatic (tipping) change.  If only people knew which details to pay attention to....

It would help if CEO´s at least payed attention the obvious ones, and some of them are obvious,....  disasters like the BP Catastrophic Oil Spill in the Gulf could be avoided.

Is it a failure in management?  Or is it precisely because most companies tend to overvalue management skills and under value technical expertise?  

I guess I am just venting out of frustration. I would love to hear from people that either share my frustration or, and specially, those that can share the solution to it.  

Thanks,

Nara