March 29, 2013
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Meetings
How much of a person’s life is wasted at meetings?
Many meetings are productive and result in ideas or resolutions to problems coming from a collective mind that is more creative and knowledgeable than could be expected of any one of its participants. Other meetings consist of excessive discussion to reach what was a foregone conclusion. Sometimes you can tell in advance how productive a meeting is going to be; often you can’t.
It would be depressing to actually try to figure how much of my life has been spent in meetings – which would be the first step toward answering the question of how much time was wasted. Let me simply say that I accept meetings as an inevitable part of life.
I won’t discuss meetings that have been required of me at work. However, even my free time, after work or before work, is filled with meetings, and I will mention a very few of those.
For several years, I was a member of the board of directors of KBDI-TV, Channel 12, a public television station in the Denver area. There were some great people on that board with me, and much of what we did during our meetings was productive. If they were only a bit shorter and less frequent . . . . .
Whenever I am inclined to complain about those meetings, I refrain. One moment at one meeting makes such a great story that it counterbalances the more tedious times. In the early days of Channel 12, we were constantly looking for ways to raise funds to get the station on the air and keep it broadcasting. We began one meeting with a discussion of a potential grant from Coors Brewing Company. The proposal was controversial because the name Coors was notorious in Colorado for its very conservative political activism. We were trying to determine if we could accept funds from the company without being caught up in partisan politics. As the discussion proceeded, Penfield Tate, one of the board members arrived late. Pen had been the first African-American mayor of the City of Boulder and was known and respected for his liberal views on most issues.
After listening to just a few comments by other board members, Pen stated unequivocally, “I say we can take money from the devil as long as we get to choose how it is spent.”
“So,” he was asked, “you are in favor of accepting a grant from Coors?” This was the first time Coors had been mentioned since Pen had entered the room.
“Not from Coors,” he said. “From the devil is okay; but not from Coors.”
Several years later, I served for a short time on the Board of Education for Clear Creek County School District R-1. I cannot begin to tell you how much I admire the people who serve in positions like that. The issues they face are important and affect the lives of our children. They serve without pay. They are constantly faced with competing requests or demands from teachers, administrators, parents, students, community members and state and federal governments. No decision made by a board will make all sides happy. Despite giving their best efforts, the work of these decision makers is almost always thankless. And there are more meetings than the public can imagine.
After I left the Board of Education, I remained active in PTA and in Building Advisory and Accountability Committee activities. More meetings. I was the chairman of a committee working with the Board to conduct community forums to find ways to improve the school system. More meetings. It was tiring, but I think worthwhile because I did have some small impact on the education received by hundreds of students, including my own children.
Jumping way forward in time, for the past couple of years I have helped to organize and have served on the board of the Arvada West High School Foundation. With our alma mater approaching its 50th anniversary, some of my old classmates realized that there should be an alumni organization that could provide a sense of community and historical continuity, and could also support the present and future activities of the school. In spite of my innate aversion to meetings, I joined the effort. In addition to being a board member, I am on committees to choose scholarship recipients, to establish a hall of fame for distinguished alumni, to plan events and fundraisers and I edit the newsletter. Most of the board members do at least as much as me – some a great deal more. Almost everything done by the Foundation requires multiple meetings.
Again, I am not complaining. The Foundation receives donations from many former students and staff of Arvada West and we are obliged to make productive use of that money. The projects on which I have worked provide benefit to others and I feel they are worthwhile. Still, they all require meetings.
Sometimes there is a better way. Within a week or so after our son Michael began kindergarten, Martensen Elementary School held a back to school night for parents. We had the opportunity to meet teachers and staff and we new parents were introduced to the PTA, with its various committees, and the Building Advisory and Accountability Committee, and its sub-committees. One of these groups was soliciting members to help to get a sidewalk placed in front of Martensen. There was curb and gutter, but no sidewalk. Children had to walk in the street or through dirt to get to school.
I did not want to be on that committee – there were meetings and things, you know. Instead, I asked if I could do something independently to try to help the situation. I was told to go ahead, so the following week I telephoned the Wheat Ridge City Attorney (Martensen Elementary is in Wheat Ridge), whom I knew slightly, and asked if he was aware that there was no sidewalk in front of a school serving hundreds of Wheat Ridge children. He said he did not know that. I opined that it was a potential danger. He agreed and promised to discuss the problem with the public works department. Within a few weeks, the City put in a sidewalk. Only one person thanked me for my efforts, but I was gratified because I felt that my children and other children had become safer. I was also gratified because I had not attended any meetings.
I am sure that the City Attorney and City employees and contractors did spend time at meetings to bring about the beneficial result. I hope they felt that their time was worthwhile and not wasted.
I could write for days describing different kinds of meetings in which I have participated or merely attended – some good, some not so much – but why would I want to waste that time now? I have some meetings coming up next week and I should start preparing for them.
It sounds like you at least have meetings for good causes. Most of the meetings I’ve attended have been for work. My husband and I have both spent plenty of years in the corporate environment and I have always wondered how much money is wasted in meetings when you count the salaries that are paid to be present. It’s worth considering. I love how you got the sidewalks going without attending any meetings. Now THAT’S progress. 🙂
Most of my meetings have also been in some business context. I, too, have been amazed at the amount of money, mostly in people’s salaries, that it costs to have those things.
The problem with the meetings I’ve been in is that they are usually attended by people. I don’t have the same problems when I meet with, for instance, trees. The best meeting I ever had was attended only by a woodchuck.
In the foothills above Boulder, Colorado, many years ago, the two of us listened to another meeting in the streets below us that was being held between two groups of people called the “hawks” and “doves.” There was a lot of yelling and screaming in that town meeting, punctuated by the sound of squealing tires, cries of pain, and a couple of gunshots. The woodchuck and I had a good meeting about the foibles and folly of humans in general. The consensus we arrived at was that he would return to his woodpile, and I would walk straight into the wild mountains and never look back. It was a good meeting.
Meetings among people are both boon and bane, and a consensus is hard to find. Often, after they’re over, I feel like I could make a good argument for a wise and benevolent dictatorship, but it always breaks down when I try to identify just who that could be.
But meetings have their place. It’s clear that good works have come out of many of the meetings you’ve participated in, and that’s a good thing. Those of us in the woods here are in awe of your willingness to attend meetings with people in order to serve others. The general consensus here is that any of us were ever caught in a meeting we would gnaw off our own leg or paw, and escape.
It seems that humans – or people – are so much like us that we should learn how to coexist with that species. Why do they cause such trouble?
I think it’s the whole evolution of the cortical complex thingy. People got so complex that their neural synapses are now just a glitch waiting for electricity to happen. Every time a spark gets sent down the line they short out, and forget who they are really. .