The Annoyance Of Meetings

February 21, 2014      Admin

Sometime back, in a post titled Fundraising Nonsense, I lamented the fact the biggest waste of nonprofit time is ‘the meeting’.

George Smith, the late, great UK copywriter put it best:

“I always used to say that meetings were what you were doing when you weren’t working. They remain the regular ceremonial of the client/supplier relationship and a terrifying abuse of everyone’s precious time. The average fundraiser now spends most of his/her time in meetings. Everyone knows there are too many meetings, no one does anything about it. This is why commuter trains are now full of people working – they have been in meetings all day.”

Having just finished a week of meetings — many of them of the online conference call variety connected via the marvels of technologies like GoToMeeting or Webex — I couldn’t resist sending fellow Agitators into the weekend with this delightful reenactment by Tripp & Tyler of a video conference call in real time.

Have a good weekend.

Roger

5 responses to “The Annoyance Of Meetings”

  1. Martha Ernst says:
    February 21, 2014 at 1:54 am

    Amen, amen! Talked with a client this week who told me she had three days of back to back meetings. How can you get any “work” done if you are in meetings all day long? Appreciate this post.

  2. Daryl Upsall says:
    February 21, 2014 at 4:29 am

    I could not agree more. One of the joys of working with non-profits and not within one is the days per week gained to actually work instead of having meetings about meetings

  3. Larry May says:
    February 21, 2014 at 9:38 am

    When I went to work for my mentor the late Don Kuhn at for-profit Walter Karl, he had spent the previous 30 years in the non-profit world. He said the best thing about moving to for-profit was not spending all his time in meetings and writing memos. Not much has changed in the thirty years since then.

  4. Barry Nelson says:
    February 21, 2014 at 10:12 am

    I understand that people hate meetings. But it’s interesting that there are people making a living speaking at conferences and consulting about how organizations don’t communicate enough and work in silos. There has to be a balance. Work can be accomplished at meetings as long as we go into them with healthy expectations and goals.

  5. Kim Silva says:
    February 21, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    Hilarious! Have you read this one from Blue Avocado?

    http://www.blueavocado.org/content/how-schedule-nonprofit-meeting-point-vu

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