Corporate Diarrhoea

I was having a conversation yesterday and it reminded me of a one that I had with my dad a few years ago. He always felt that companies suffered from Corporate Diarrhoea nowadays! This was his tale of meetings in the modern world - anyone recognise this experience?

1. Meeting (1) held to discuss urgent issue
2. Meeting (2) to discuss action points from meeting (1)
3. Meeting (3) to make decision - but you decide that not all action points have been followed up - so more time needed
4. Meeting (4) to review action points from (3)
5. Meeting (5) to discuss outcomes and possible decisions now action points completed
6. Meeting (6) to review outcome of (5) after people have had time to think which decision needs to be made.
7. Meeting (7) new member has now joined so you need to recap meeting (1) to (6)
8. Meeting (8) needs to be rescheduled at last minute because of meeting pile up.
9. Meeting (9) reviews latest position and decides that this is now urgent and at the next meeting the chair will present the final decision.
10. Meeting (10) cancelled as competitor made their decision weeks ago, implemented it and has now taken the business from you. One member reports that the customer had felt neglected as meetings with them had been cancelled because of the need to attend the internal discussions.
11. Meeting (11) turns to cost cutting and possible redundancy program due to loss of business
12. Meeting (12) cancelled as 12 out of the 14 members of the team have been made redundant - as a chance to get rid of poor performers. Remaining 2 members use the afternoon to go and played golf as a way of relaxing due to the stress of recent events.

Anyone recognise this? Internal vs external focus is a real issue. Compare this to Virgin who decided to take on British Airways - 13 weeks later the first plane took off. Could your culture have brought that off?

Comments

[Bruce Lewin]

Very funny :-)

[holly]

I think you forgot Meeting (0) -- the meeting to discuss what the meeting will be about. I was at a company where we were quite meeting heavy and every once in awhile we would have a pre-meeting. I thought it was amusing.