Pure Hollywood – Blockbuster Meetings

Very elegant note from a client today about crappy meetings. An all too familiar story… still.

My response is in the attached file Meetings & Email Best Practice (with a bonus piece on crappy email protocol and what to do about it).

 

“Tough day to day… spent most of it in meetings on various subjects with peers and bosses. I have noticed a few things about meetings:

1. Most meetings are called for the sole reason of advertising a problem that is almost always known before hand, and then justifying, explaining, understanding the known problem (negative ), as opposed to, a minute or two’s acknowledgment of the known problem followed by the rest of the time spent in crafting a solution (positive).

Therefore, most meetings are negative by nature and hence I bet all involved are describing today as “rough”.

2. Politics and solutions don’t mix (odd that) Pure Hollywood – blockbuster meeting, great cast, digital sound and a familiar script. A dramatisation, a performance and when the experience is over all that’s left are memories and a (on the payroll) critic’s’ great review (in the form of minutes). The problem has merely been viewed and we’ll see the sequel the next time we get together.

3. At none of these meetings was the question answered
“What are we going to do differently tomorrow as a result of this meeting today? “So if nothing changes then we’re back to the old definition of insanity
(doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result).

Now I just need to figure out how (or if) it can be done better… any ideas?”