Meeting Before the Meeting
Back in my former life, if you got an email from someone requesting a “quick chat” you knew something big was afoot. For some reason “quick chat” became a euphemism for something urgent and important.
I don’t know why we disguise things, but we do.
Because most “quick chats,” however, were neither quick nor pleasant. Instead, they were long, necessary one-on-one conversations that were mostly good uses of time. My experience with big expensive meetings, on the other hand, is that they are mostly useless. Which is why I don’t understand why we propose and accept so many of them.
I think performance art is a thing because performance is a thing. After all, most art resonates because the viewer can see themselves in it. And big meetings are performance.
Do you find yourself meeting before the meeting? If so, why isn’t that the meeting? Because that is where all of the interesting stuff is being discussed and hashed out.
None of this is to say that big meetings are totally useless. And they can be necessary and productive, particularly if the point is performance, i.e., there is a one-way message that needs to go out that everyone needs to rally around. They are not, however, conducive to discussion or decision-making, which is why the meeting before the meeting remains a thing.
– Tim
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