Meetings : The corporate Harlem Shake

Meetings: the Corporate Harlem Shake

Are you lonely?

Don’t like working on your own?

Hate making decisions?

You have all the symptoms and you need to call a MEETING.

Meetings have become part and parcel of our corporate world. Meetings are to corporate what Harlem shake is to dance.

How many of you know about Harlem Shake ?

Let me try to explain what is Harlem Shake.

It starts out with one person dancing and everyone else not noticing. Then suddenly at  the drop of beat everyone goes crazy and start dancing. Cos Lons Terroriastas , Cos Lons Terroriastas ., Cos Lons Terroriastas .People make fool of themselves, and it lasts for 30-45 seconds.

On the other hand meetings are very similar; it starts off with one person speaking and everyone else not noticing; and then suddenly at the point of contention everyone just jumps in and starts blabbering. They go crazy and make fool of everyone, it lasts for 30-45 minutes.

Today I am going to share some aspects and personalities that make our meetings fun and counter productive.

How it all starts?

It all starts with the BOSS planning the meeting and sending out the invites. He feels that it is a Town hall, so let’s invite everyone and waste their time. Yeah WHY NOT it is a corporate Harlem Shake party put on your masks and join in!! I won’t mind attending these useless meetings as long as it involves FREE FOOD. How many of you would join meeting for free food?

I knew there were many like me.

Now lets talk about latecomers, these are the folks who are always late to the meeting; 5 min, 10, 15 min and every time they have the same excuse. Oh my meeting reminder didn’t come up. OH Really, you are always on time for free food meetings.

Kicking off the meetings take half the time. Especially if it involves a high tech gadget like a projector. That’s where Mr. SMARTY PANTS comes into picture; he would get on the table and try to fix the projector forgetting there is something called a remote to control it.

Then we have our colleagues who have transparent bodies. They would stand in front of projector and try to explain the slide. The title of the slide projected on their forehead and company pie chart projected on their stomach as if it was their food consumption pie chart.

What else happens during the meeting?

We draw fancy flow charts, create unachievable roadmaps, make meaningless decisions, form useless sub committees and all that on COMPANY’s EXPENSE.

If we closely observe our meeting lingo, it is full of Jargon that concludes no concrete action. Let’s look at some of them.

1. It's on my radar
2. Low hanging fruit, Deep Dive, Thinking out of the Box
3. End of the day – Deliverable 's are always End of the Day. Why do want to deliver when everybody is gone for the day?
4. All hands on deck – What are we playing Poker here?

Now lets talk about SASSY CLASSY Miss Social Media, she is always busy texting, browsing Facebook, Twitter, and whenever her name comes up during the meeting ; she would say can you please repeat that; I didn’t get that.

Then we have “hard stoppers”, these folks pretend to be very cautious about time and would signal the remaining time for meeting 15 min, 10 min, 5 min remaining; I have a hard stop at the top of the hour. Five minutes after the finish of the meeting, I see the same guy loafing around; sipping coffee or chit chatting.

The best part is how we end our meetings, let’s take this offline, let’s touch base later which leads to another meeting and the corporate Harlem shake continues.