Recently, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a study, which analyzed the meeting situation based on a Norwegian survey among 9,000 participants. The study’s finding are not that surprising, it shows that 14% of firm wage bills are payed for meeting attendance (so 14% of all wages are going into paying the time participants spend in meetings). Meetings are commonly critized as the most soul-sucking time, energy and money wasting activity across any white collar industry. The stories about (mostly) bad meetings are legion, and I dont want to dive into them.
While reading some comments on the paper, a user cited Wadge’s Law of Meetings:
Before every formal meeting there’s a smaller, more exclusive, less formal meeting where all the important decisions are made.
This one gave me a good chuckle and made me think. Readers of my blog may remember my love for aphorisms. So during my recent fall vacation I thought about my hot takes about meetings and around them 🙂 Here you go:
Consensus is often just accountability diluted until nobody can be blamed.
When nobody has the authority to decide, everybody gets the obligation to attend.
The more people invited to a decision, the fewer people responsible for its consequences.
A meeting is often the price an organization pays for not trusting its employees.
A calendar full of meetings is a visible accomplishment. A day of uninterrupted thinking leaves no witnesses.
The person doing the work has a deadline. The person blocking the work has a calendar.
Organizations eventually learn to reward the appearance of coordination more reliably than the achievement of results.
An email asks for attention. A meeting takes it hostage.
A meeting is the one place where consuming other people’s productivity can resemble leadership
Every unclear responsibility creates another meeting. Every meeting creates another opportunity to leave responsibility unclear.
An organization has two kinds of work: producing value and negotiating who gets to produce, approve, and claim it. Meetings are where the second kind happens.