Today I have eight meetings. There was one at 8, then 10, and pretty soon my 11 will pop up. That’s a long one. Goes up to lunch. Then there’s lunch, which I have to eat in public, and then back for meetings again about financial stuff. This is the time of year when finance goes around holding our guts in their hands, sort of hefting them back and forth in an affable fashion. Bleh.
I can’t think. Thinking and meeting are mutually exclusive. You can prioritize your plateful of agendas. You can run ideas down to the red zone and see if anybody can push them over the goal line. You can take a couple of swings at issues in your wheelhouse. You can take strategies, field strip them and see if they’re ready for combat. But think? Nah.
I gotta go. Write me if you feel like it and tell me a few things:
- How many meetings do you have today?
- Why do people call meetings?
- How many of your meetings are necessary and how many are held just to honk somebody’s horn?
- Do you hate meetings? Love them? Both?
- Do you have trouble staying awake in meetings? What do you do about the problem of meeting narcolepsy?
- Do you use your BlackBerry to entertain yourself during meetings?
- Do you love/hate Powerpoint?
- Do you think presiding over meetings is a way executives to goof off?
- How much of your writing pad do you cover with doodles during a meeting?
- What percentage of the meeting is occupied by your boss talking?
- Anything else you’d like to tell me about meetings.
I’ll see you guys later. I’m bummed. My idea of a great day is a blank calendar and a blue sky out my hermetically-sealed window. This is clearly not going to be one of those. And that first martini is at least eight hours away.