Home » Opinion » Book review
Mind-numbing meetings kill morale and bottom line
By Ni Tao |
August 28, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
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ATTENDING press conferences and forums is a routine part of a journalist's work. Sometimes meetings are the place to pick up a few story ideas or jot down solid quotes that may come in handy later.
As a journalist I've attended enough to know that some are worthless. At a large symposium early this year, I watched with great boredom as speakers took turns at the lectern, briefing the audience on the latest developments in Hong Kong-Shanghai commercial ties.
Except for one or two speakers who ad libbed from a few notes, most read prepared texts and seldom made eye contact with the audience.
Though the 400-seat conference room was filled to capacity, and extra seats had to be arranged for the press, the occasional yawns and a few sleeping "participants" said it all about the boredom as dull presentations dragged on and on.
Any Chinese knows that meetings are the last thing their country is short of. Apart from a handful of conferences that do matter, like the annual convening of national legislators and political advisers, most are just tests of endurance.
So palpable is the agony of attending many mind-numbing meetings that a phrase has been coined to describe the torture -- "mountain of official documents and sea of meetings."
It is with this sensitivity -- or insensitivity -- to meetings that I chose "Death by Meeting" for this review.
Author Patrick Lencioni isn't writing about "karoshi" (death caused by overwork). His discussion of unproductive meetings unfolds through a tale of a CEO coming to realize that boring company meetings were killing its bottom line.
Figuratively speaking, uninspired meetings not only stifle creativity, they may also bring an abrupt end to one's political career.
Recent years have seen scores of officials being sacked or disciplined over gaffes at official meetings or over their failure to show up. In December 2008, six cadres at a state-owned company in Hengyang, Hunan Province, were suspended from duty after being caught sleeping at a meeting.
In the October that year, 25 directors of government offices in Feng County, Chongqing Municipality, were ordered to publicly repent their "lack of discipline" on TV. They had sent 25 subordinates to attend a meeting in their stead.
This phenomenon of officials going AWOL from or absent-minded at meetings has infuriated Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong Province, who criticized some officials for dozing off at a provincial-level family planning conference in March 2009.
"Those who slept during meetings, I've marked you all. You are going to have a harrowing time this year doing your jobs as I will keep my eye on you," Wang said.
Wang's displeasure is understandable, but we should ask the following question: what made "unruly" officials snub meetings at their own peril?
For one thing, they might have been time-pressed for every meeting. For another, they might have wanted to avoid hearing speakers spout boilerplate rhetoric that is learned by rote and devoid of meaning. No wonder the bored audience would be lulled to sleep after being fed platitudes for hours.
"Bad meetings, and what they indicate and provoke in an organization, generate real human suffering in the form of anger, lethargy and cynicism," Lencioni writers.
For those officials who wish to stop talking gobbledygook but don't know how, Li Yuanchao, chief of the Communist Party's Organization Department, set an example at a meeting on May 6.
In a speech that lasted only 10 minutes, Li called on Party cadres to conduct themselves accordingly.
Using expressions like "let those who trade power for money rot in notoriety," he made no attempt to smooth the edges. His straightforward style stands in sharp contrast to the oblique ways in which officials often stumble on.
As a journalist I've attended enough to know that some are worthless. At a large symposium early this year, I watched with great boredom as speakers took turns at the lectern, briefing the audience on the latest developments in Hong Kong-Shanghai commercial ties.
Except for one or two speakers who ad libbed from a few notes, most read prepared texts and seldom made eye contact with the audience.
Though the 400-seat conference room was filled to capacity, and extra seats had to be arranged for the press, the occasional yawns and a few sleeping "participants" said it all about the boredom as dull presentations dragged on and on.
Any Chinese knows that meetings are the last thing their country is short of. Apart from a handful of conferences that do matter, like the annual convening of national legislators and political advisers, most are just tests of endurance.
So palpable is the agony of attending many mind-numbing meetings that a phrase has been coined to describe the torture -- "mountain of official documents and sea of meetings."
It is with this sensitivity -- or insensitivity -- to meetings that I chose "Death by Meeting" for this review.
Author Patrick Lencioni isn't writing about "karoshi" (death caused by overwork). His discussion of unproductive meetings unfolds through a tale of a CEO coming to realize that boring company meetings were killing its bottom line.
Figuratively speaking, uninspired meetings not only stifle creativity, they may also bring an abrupt end to one's political career.
Recent years have seen scores of officials being sacked or disciplined over gaffes at official meetings or over their failure to show up. In December 2008, six cadres at a state-owned company in Hengyang, Hunan Province, were suspended from duty after being caught sleeping at a meeting.
In the October that year, 25 directors of government offices in Feng County, Chongqing Municipality, were ordered to publicly repent their "lack of discipline" on TV. They had sent 25 subordinates to attend a meeting in their stead.
This phenomenon of officials going AWOL from or absent-minded at meetings has infuriated Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong Province, who criticized some officials for dozing off at a provincial-level family planning conference in March 2009.
"Those who slept during meetings, I've marked you all. You are going to have a harrowing time this year doing your jobs as I will keep my eye on you," Wang said.
Wang's displeasure is understandable, but we should ask the following question: what made "unruly" officials snub meetings at their own peril?
For one thing, they might have been time-pressed for every meeting. For another, they might have wanted to avoid hearing speakers spout boilerplate rhetoric that is learned by rote and devoid of meaning. No wonder the bored audience would be lulled to sleep after being fed platitudes for hours.
"Bad meetings, and what they indicate and provoke in an organization, generate real human suffering in the form of anger, lethargy and cynicism," Lencioni writers.
For those officials who wish to stop talking gobbledygook but don't know how, Li Yuanchao, chief of the Communist Party's Organization Department, set an example at a meeting on May 6.
In a speech that lasted only 10 minutes, Li called on Party cadres to conduct themselves accordingly.
Using expressions like "let those who trade power for money rot in notoriety," he made no attempt to smooth the edges. His straightforward style stands in sharp contrast to the oblique ways in which officials often stumble on.
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