Meetings are to organisations what ‘Kyunki Saas’ or ‘Friends’ is to Star TV(attempt at analogy): endless, circumambulating & serving no purpose whatsoever. Organisations have meetings because they have huge conference rooms with double-bed-sized tables, projectors & video conferencing equipments
These days meetings are conducted to ensure at least three persons have been left post-retrenchment. The hierarchy in any organisation, which has at least three people as above, is decided by who’s calling the meeting, who’s going into the meeting or who’s taking down messages for the people in the meeting. Your ultimate aim should be to join either of the first two bcos third requires the intricate skills of conversation, recall & documentation.
Tips for Conducting and Attending Meetings
Always have an agenda Without it, you will achieve nothing. With it, you will achieve atleast an agenda
Circulate meeting info like objectives, agenda, location, date/time, background information, and assigned preparation items, to all participants beforehand. This is to frighten them into wearing ties and their grandpa’s cufflinks(and whatever is the equivalent for women). It may also mention the snacks that will be served in the meeting to enable the participants to decide whether to attend or not
Start on time Though never in the history of meetings(assuming there is one) has a meeting started on time
Arrive for a meeting on time Or you might be the second last to arrive(if you are last it might start without you). Enter with an apologetic look(disguised, of course), carrying a lot of papers and harping loud indistinguishable words into your mobile. All this after you waited for two hours into the scheduled time of the meeting, playing Solitaire on your office PC(not Quake III as IT Support won’t let you install such games in your office PC)
Always carry a note pad and lots of loose sheets of papers to meetings. You have to(read’appear to’) continuously take down notes. Draw caricatures of your boss, his laptop(read ‘secretary’) and also of your enemies. If you are not good at drawing, you may draw scratchy straight lines
Be interesting, stimulating, informative and entertaining at meetings. People don’t want you to be yourself. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm. This may require Viagra. Please consult a physician first
Record meeting notes and store them in a meeting archive. You may trap your enemies to do this tedious task. This is very important in intra-office communication as it provides people with the opportunity to stick yellow slips on reports no one will read and write their juniors’ name on the slips. It is the only way they remember their juniors’ names and not call them “heywhatisyourname”
Meetings are broadly of the following types
Brainstorming - means the caller of the meeting has just found that his bag of ideas has exhausted. The good thing is it is presumed that everyone at the meeting has a brain, the bad thing is it is presumed it works.
The fool-proof strategy is to go to ‘google’ or ‘dogpile’ or any search engine and fill ‘topic+of+the+meeting’ in the search box. Then open every fifth site and note every fifth word. Use these ‘keywords’ every five minutes of the meeting preceded by “I have a brilliant idea.” in the manner of someone who has just dug an underground tunnel to terrorist camps in POK(terrible attempt at analogy)
There will be people who say, ”What exactly do you mean?” These are your enemies. Note their names for future action(which could include sending them to the above terrorist camps). There might be people who say, ”I did that earlier, but I.” These are your immediate seniors. And then, there will be people who say, ”Come on, this is never going to work” These are your top bosses(and they are going to use your idea).
Presentations - require a dimlit room, a laptop, a person who doesn’t know how to operate it, a person who has actually put all the information on it but is required to keep quiet, a laptop-nurse who switches it on/off and several people to admire the advancement of human technology embodied by Powerpoint, Laser pen and Projector
My theory is that there is a direct correlation between collapse of world economies and rise in the use of laptops at meetings. No, thanks. I don’t accept Nobel Prize
Use a new background/colour for your screen/slides or you will be considered belonging to the period of Jambavan. If you think of using the board or plastic slides, you will be wrapped in a bandage from head to toe and sent off to Timbuktu. It’s a good idea not to match your clothes to the colours of your slides or you might be considered a pie-chart or bar diagram, depending on your body format.
Status Review - are like prison musters, ensuring that everyone is there and indulging in only controlled criminal activities. It should normally consist of ‘Present’ or ‘Yeah’ but, for reasons unknown, requires confessing every sin you may have committed, such as standing idle at the coffee/tea machine for two minutes in the last week.
They are more frequent around appraisal time, so that the boss is then absolved from having to explain why you still are where you are after the appraisal & will continue to be, unless you stop standing idle near the above coffee/tea machine.
The caller of the status review meeting usually has sheets of paper, much like the Penal Code, in which he ticks off your crimes while sipping coffee/tea from the above coffee/tea machine, while you are left with the option of going back to your desk to write “Work is Worship” 2, 000 times.
[ I always close my eyes while worshipping. As per my boss, work is worship. So I close my eyes and worship all through the day in office, sorry work, yawn.]
Damage Control - You are called to this meeting for blaming you for things going wrong in the first place and often later on for things going more wrong after they have gone wrong.
They feature dramatic hand-gesturing, watch-glancing, table-thumping, four-letter-wording and endless cups of coffee(snacks are not served in a damage control meeting). The correct strategy is to look as gloomy as Devdas on a dry day, nod or shake your head vigorously, keep punching at your mobile, and take notes giving the impression of writing quickly and urgently.
Relationship Meeting - On hearing ‘relationship’ meeting, don’t think that this means sex at workplace has now been legalised. No, alas, it hasn’t; atleast not yet.
These are about dealing with colleagues & other depts without kick-boxing. These could be called ‘Fault Finding’ meetings or ‘Finding-Where-To-Put-The-Blame-After-Fault-Finding’ meetings
[The above has no connection whatsoever with how meetings are conducted in the places where I work(ed) and the manner in which I attend them]