Death by Meeting..Dilbert Way

I am sure it is not an exclusive sunken feeling that most of my work time goes in meetings where a very small percentage of actual work is done. In a sense a considerable amount of time and energy is wasted, specially for IT Consultants,  we would have solved world hunger problem (bit exageration will not harm anybody ), but sadly we are kept busy in meetings.

So when I thought lets shed some tear on this topic, I found Mr. S Adams has done all the fun work. Here are few for a good laugh on a necessary evil and if anybody disagree or have different opinion  .. well.. "Lets set up a meeting we will discuss" and to keep the team spirit going in the meeting we can always say ..." Lets take it Offline"...

1. A Congregation of Uninitiated

More often than not I found people come un prepared in a meeting reducing it to a congregations of uninitiated trying to add trivial points to make their mark.

2. Pre Meetings.. Kill through repetitions:

Pre meeting are absolute survival kit for all delegating Managers, in series of pre meetings they get familiarized with the deck that they are supposed to prepare and present. The fun part is they often disagree with a point or a line that they have introduced in the deck in an earlier review meeting.

3. Absence of the Elusive Decision Maker/s in a meeting:

We typically have multiple stake holders of a business solution. If it is hard to get all of them in a meetings, it is harder to keep them focused to the solution through out the discussions and then as it happens some one in the room asks have you run this through Mr. Xyz .. we need his consent too... (why no body told before we need Mr Xyz as well we could have kept him informed as well.. no big deal)  

But worst is when the some one says "it has to go for PMO approval..." it means we have an uphill task and more widespread convincing to do before we reach a conclusion

5. Speak first listen later:

There are always passionate participants those who are so eager to prove his/her point that it throws others out of gear.

6. Here Comes the Killer:  Can you please join to this meeting real quick:

There are many unmissable ones .. but I felt I am overdoing this on a lazy Sunday afternoon.. enough is enough, I should be better go and check my calendar for  tomorrow morning meetings...