Was that the worst meeting I have ever attended? No. Not by a long shot! But it was another in a long line of meetings that when they are over somebody (in this case the S2, Mr. 747 pilot and Naval Academy Graduate) sidles up to you at the urinal and says “Well, that is an hour of my life I am never going to get back!”
A few years back I read the book “Death by Meeting” and I passed out ten copies to the staff. They were generally not impressed. A lot of people actually like meetings. They get a chance to blah, blah, blah while providing nothing of value or meaning. Some people confuse activity with accomplishment. Not me. I know a lousy meeting when I attend one. Do you? Can you tell when you just killed an hour of your life in a mind numbing, life stealing, purposeless driven attempt to pretend to accomplish something?
Although I am a government employee and we have plenty of time to discuss the benefits of one football team over another, wonder if we are going to get another pay raise this year and even wonder where California Guard recruiting is having their big shin-dig this year (since we aren’t in recruiting and won’t be going). But some of us still hate to lose time to a meeting that we don’t need and didn’t ask for. What is a meeting really for? What should you accomplish in a meeting? Read the book “Death by Meeting” to find out.
I have fallen victim to the Siren song of the need for a meeting from time to time. MSG Pine used to LOVE meetings and after I left that one battalion I understood they had meetings every day instead of twice a week. Meetings don’t take the place of action, but many leaders think they do. I fell victim first when I was young and in charge and we needed to have a weekly meeting. Why did we have to have a weekly meeting exactly? Everybody was doing it you know…that was what we were expected to do…how else can you accomplish anything if you don’t have a meeting?
Even here in Iraq we decided to continue our predecessor’s policy of having a meeting via Adobe Breeze (online) with our numerous subordinate units scattered throughout the IJOA for a couple of months. Every week we would prepare slides and rehearse and rehearse so we sounded intelligent, confident and provide information and value to our “customers’. After awhile I came to a light bulb moment: we talk to these people every day or more via the phone, personal visit or communicate via email and the internet using shared drives and other methods of communication. Why do we need a “meeting”? So we stopped. We saved over 30 Soldiers (meeting attendees in some capacity as presenter or audience) an hour every week. Including the preparation time we saved probably over 50 Soldier work hours by cancelling that meeting.
When everybody can’t come together they either use the Adobe Breeze (which is advertised as something else on radio ads, but basically we can watch a slide presentation, ask questions on a microphone or type in our questions as the meeting progresses. It is like a telephone conference on steroids. Online computer based meetings is an incredibly efficient way to communicate information and saves people hours and hours of travel time (like if they require a helicopter flight to all come together in one place). But a meeting still needs to be a worthwhile effort with an effective purpose and outcome. It can’t just be “because”; “Because” just makes people find “good” reasons to miss the meeting.
What is a good meeting? A good meeting communicates information or allows multiple parties to communicate information that they would never be able to hear or communicate to the group any other way. I attend a couple of good meetings every week or every other week. One involves the headquarters above me and includes all the equivalent or higher commands who are working in the area of supporting the fight. Transportation, moving stuff around, turning all the stuff in and making sure we get food, parts, ammunition, fuel and money where it needs to be on time is covered or discussed as necessary. Only special issues needing emphasis get addressed. There are more Generals and Colonels attending than little guys like me. They don’t have time to waste. Everybody gets a big picture view and sees how it might affect them even though it isn’t specific to them right now. It allows for planning way ahead and bringing issues up that they might not hear from the operational side of the organization. Most of these meetings are boring and not applicable, but for me there are a few diamonds and a bit of gold (18K) every meeting.
My staff all attend a specific meeting for their area every week where they either work through the details that allow us to perform our critical tasks or allow issues to percolate up and share common problems and solutions. So I am not against meetings per se, just meetings that are not clearly delineated with a purpose, an end-state and have a time driven agenda rather than purpose driven one.
Every week we attend a big staff meeting where we brief the Commander. I am all for briefing the commander, but we are all here every day 24/7. We are in a war zone for goodness’ sake and there is nothing that the commander shouldn’t already be aware of that is important. If he doesn’t already know it then it isn’t important enough to save for a Saturday meeting. And everybody has to attend. That means we have all the most important leaders in the whole organization either in one place or attending via Adobe Breeze to listen to the staff brief the commander on stuff that he should already be aware of. And since the whole staff briefs there is an abbreviation of the information so there is no depth and detail; it is all a big overview. If we have a meeting during the week that covers the same information we still have the mandatory weekly staff meeting. Really; what else do I have to do but prepare, attend, brief and listen every week?
The Doc loves to hear what I have to say every week. I like to hear what the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) has to say about what is happening in the brigade; any sexual harassment taking place? Did we finish distributing the Brigade’s rape…er, Safety! whistles….okay, not really. This meeting is the only chance the special staff (Medical, Legal, EEO, Chaplain, Weather, Safety, Standardization, and CWOB) get to (theoretically) brief the commander. But if something important happens they can go right to him immediately. Why do we have these meetings again?
Meetings like these began in the days of Napoleon or even later. There was a time before cell phones, video conferences, Adobe Breeze, laser pointers, power point, word processors, photocopies, screens, projectors and of course the internet when they had meetings that brought everybody together. Back in those days the only way to bring everybody (all the staffs, subordinate commands, important people and other interested or affected parties) up to date on what had happened in the past: day, week, month, quarter etc. was to come together and painstakingly present using black boards, butcher paper, wall sized maps and formal presentations requiring hand-held wooden sticks to point with and they briefed the commander. (Emphasis on “Brief”, since even as brief as they were meetings in the Guard as late as 1990 lasted hours and were marathon sessions of mind numbing data, questions, obfuscations and “Great question, sir, let me get back to you next month” with leaders getting home after midnight with a normal work day scheduled the day.)
With all this technology available information flows so quickly and questions take seconds on an email rather than waiting for a monthly meeting; the regular monthly or (in Iraq, weekly) meeting and briefing to the commander has become an anachronism. These “briefings” is a way to give the leader a sense that he is “leading” with his minions (staff) gathered around him.
I always have wondered why leaders don’t get a “read ahead packet” so rather than waiting for a speaker to read each slide to him and explain what should be self-explanatory, the leader can instead bring his questions to the meeting. We have an elaborate dance where the leader acts important and is “briefed” by speakers who read off of slides and bit by bit the leader becomes informed. If the speaker could read more quickly or write a more detailed explanation everybody in the meeting wouldn’t have to wait for the briefer to finish reading aloud to us what we can all easily read already written on the projected slide.
Mercifully, when the larger weekly (or other multi-staff) meetings end we all rise to attention, salute and say half-heartedly (or maybe less than half…) “Wings of the Sun”, which of course comes from…well it is our motto. It indicates the history of…okay, we just made it up for this deployment, but it is still our motto or saying so we say it as directed.
But that isn’t how we do it. We do it the old fashioned way because that is how the leaders were raised. Leaders get briefed (at the highest level only key staff speaks) and sit, look and read while everybody silently awaits the word spoken from his lips as though they were to be commands delivered from the mount. There are generals and distinguished visitors who arrive every few days wanting to be briefed and they sagely nod and observe and make trenchant comments while the bored staff waits until they can return to their normal duties. The general is so important that we all must attend to show we care (even if we really don’t) because he might…maybe might…perhaps, might and maybe ask a question that can only be answered by some staff officer sitting in the back. I have never seen it happen of course. I have seen some folks (often a commander of one particular battalion) blurt out words about a slide or something that makes everybody look at him like he has a third eye and secretly want to throttle him; but we don’t. The XO would lean over and whisper (metaphorically speaking) “Can’t he just keep his mouth shut?” I think the same thing (if I am not reading my book...)
So we attend meetings here every week. Meetings that we sit and listen as they give the
same brief for the 45th time to another general who might have seen it only once or twice before (“Sir, this is an update from the brief we provided to you last month…”) or occasionally for their first time. (It reminds me how in California we flew people along the border to view the fence we were helping to build weekly or even more often. If we had just filmed it completely and sent them a video they would have seen more and understood it better, saved a bundle on flight hours and crew costs; but who doesn’t want a government paid trip to san Diego?)
We have weekly staff updates…plus commander’s meetings plus …what else are we going to cover again? Didn’t we cover that two days ago? We were all there; do we really need to brief him again?
How about hallway meetings? I do them often, walk down the hall way, pop my head in the door and ask a question and get some feedback. No long briefs, no formal events and no wasted time making slides and rehearsing if we don’t need to. Lunch meetings where we meet for lunch daily and discuss what is happening in our area and get decisions, clarity, ideas and elevate possible problems quickly so we don’t have any surprises and we don’t need to wait a week to cover it.
When my staff does need a meeting we gather in my office. Normally LT BF will sit in the “seat of shame” which is the seat that is farthest from my seat. It became so christened when early in the deployment he sat there as I berated him (privately of course) for what seemed FOREVER! (My children can attest that I circle back around to my point three or four times to make sure my point is made: when I ask “Is that clear?” they should (metaphorically speaking) say “Crystal!”)
We cover what needs to be covered as expeditiously as possible and then conclude with the S4 cheer: After we all come together and place our hands in the middle someone is designated to lead the cheer and the say “One, two, three Air Wolf! Aaaaaaawooooo!”
So today after church the XO was sitting with us and we were discussing the events and rumors that needed to be addressed by my section. The 8-299th is going off the reservation and the CAV is trying to circumvent the rules and other units are trying to violate this policy or that. The XO (who is eating lunch with us) says, “It seems like we (you) need a meeting!”
So now the meeting is scheduled and we will use Adobe breeze and some in person. I have high hopes that the meeting will address the issues I have discussed above and the attendees will feel like the time is well spent and provides valuable answers to nagging questions about this, that and the other thing. If it isn’t well run, managed and valuable then that is definitely just another hour of my life (and theirs) I am never going to get back.
Paraphrase of Hebrews 10:25
We need to not give up our meetings as the day of our departure draws near
(Expected to be home with our families NLT 1 DEC 11 or earlier)
