How to Attend Meetings

I've been working with quite a few companys ever since I got out into the workforce after school ... and I've realised one thing. To really succeed in a business or organization, it is sometimes helpful to know what your job is, and whether it involves any duties.

Ask among your coworkers. “Hi,” you should say. “I’m a new employee. What is the name of my job?” If they answer “long-range planner” or “politician” you are pretty much free to lepak around and go yum char until retirement. Most jobs, however, will require some work.

There are two major kinds of work in modern organizations:

1. Taking phone messages for people who are in meetings, and,
2. Going to meetings.

Your ultimate career strategy will be to get a job involving primarily No.2, going to meetings, as soon as possible, because that’s where the real power is. It is all very well and good to be able to take phone messages, but you are never going to get a position of power, a position where you can cost thousands of people their jobs with a single bodoh decision, unless you learn how to attend meetings.

The first meeting ever was held back in the Caveman Era. In those days, Man’s job was to hunt and kill his food and bring it home for Woman, who had to figure out how to cook it. The problem was, Man was slow and basically naked, whereas the prey had warm fur and could run like a kancil. (In fact it *was* a kancil, only nobody knew this).

At last someone said, “Maybe if we just sat down and did some brainstorming, we could come up with a better way to hunt our prey!” It went extremely well, plus it was much warmer sitting in a circle, so they agreed to meet again the next day, and the next.

But the women pointed out that the men had not produced anything, and the human race was pretty much starving. The men agreed that was serious and said they would put it right near the top of their “agenda”. At this point, the women, who were primitive but not stupid, started eating plants, and thus modern agriculture was born. It never would have happened without meetings.

The modern business meeting, however, might better be compared with a funeral, in the sense that you have a gathering of people who are wearing uncomfortable clothing and would rather be somewhere else. The major difference is that most funerals have a definite purpose. Also, nothing is really ever buried in a meeting.

An idea may look dead, but it will always reappear at another meeting later on. If you have ever seen the movie, “Night of the Living Dead,” you have a rough idea of how modern meetings operate, with projects and proposals that everyone thought were killed rising up constantly from their graves to stagger back into meetings and eat the brains of the living.

And one more thing : if somebody falls asleep in a meeting, have everyone else leave the room. Then collect a group of total strangers, right off the street, and have them sit around the sleeping person until he wakes up. Then have one of them say to him, “Joe, your plan is very, very risky. However, you’ve given us no choice but to try it. I only hope, for your sake, that you know what you’re getting yourself into.” Then they should file quietly out of the room.



* Adapted and shamelessly copied from Dave Barry's How to Attend a Meeting