The crap of meetings

Everyone knows that meetings rarely accomplish anything. I can count the number of meetings that were actually beneficial on one hand. But a recent string of meetings has put me over the edge.

If there’s one thing that makes a meeting truely worthless is the lack of a leader. There must be someone to run the meeting. A recent string of meetings on the topic of version control and developer documentation found myself and others in a room with absolutely no agenda…and no leader.

There was one guy that organized the meeting and reserved the proper conference room, but I don’t consider him the leader because his only role was saying, “Okay, let’s start. Does anyone have anything to say?”

The meeting was an open forum style meeting, which is fine and can often work, but only when people actually want to participate and talk. Myself…I like to talk so it wasn’t any big deal for me to start spouting off my thoughts on the topic, but after my rambling everyone just did a collective shrug-sigh and say quietly. Apparently they didn’t have any opinion or just didn’t care - pick one.

In essence, there was no decision-maker in the bunch. Just a group of people that will be told what to do. But as a sign of good faith, the bosses gave us the option of democratic committee over the issue. In this case, not a good thing.

Regardless, every meeting needs someone that can run the meeting. Someone that can engage everyone by getting out their thoughts. That person should also have an agenda - questions to discuss, scenarios to solve, or at least something that people can learn.

So there’s the biggest problem with the meeting. The second is something a little different.