The next slide appeared, and it was even busier-looking than the last one. Bugs picked up his sandwich. It looked great — thick slice of tomato, piled high…mmm-mmm. Compressing it, he took a big bite. Suddenly a thin slurry of mustard and tomato juices ran down his chin. He leaned over his paper plate, and reached for his paper napkin.

A sandwich. Courtesy California 5-a-Day Campaign.
It was one of those nano-napkins you get in restaurant dispensers, and it was overmatched. So he rose and walked to the back of the room for more napkins.
Walking back to his seat, he noticed that the same slide was on the screen, but a heavy debate was underway. He sat down and listened for a moment. Then he broke in. "Excuse me, Ash, what did I miss?"
Ash summarized, and now Bugs was back in step with the discussion — at a cost. He had delayed the meeting, he had broken the flow, and no doubt he had missed something.
Lunch meetings don't work as well as we'd like. Here are some of the hidden costs:
- Food distracts
- Rustling wrappers, chocolate chip cookies, crisp potato chips, sumptuous sushi, your favorite sandwich — they're all wonderful. And they can distract us from the business of the meeting. Most of us just can't do our best work with all these distractions.
- We lose a chance to relax
- A working lunch
is neither work
nor lunch - When we meet over food, we lose an opportunity for a period of relaxation, and a break away from the cares and stress of the workday. The more stressful and important the meeting, the more likely we are to meet over lunch. The more stressful and important the meeting, the more we need the break instead.
- The buffet is away
- If the meal is served as a buffet, people do step over to pick up something more — another bite, some mustard, or like Bugs, a napkin. When people are at the buffet, they're away. Absences corrupt decisions.
We probably can't stop all lunch meetings. In some companies, lunch meetings are actual policy. But we can do a better job of managing lunch meetings.
- Give people more space
- If you're serving food, everyone needs a seat at the table, and everyone needs more table space. Get a bigger room.
- Split the meeting
- Set aside time to eat. At least 20 minutes. During eating time, don't conduct business. Let people socialize.
- Serve food that's easy to eat
- If some people won't have table space, serve nondrip food that everyone can eat one-handed. Finger food or sandwiches work best.
We interfere with our own breaks in other ways too — not just meetings. For instance, some of you are reading this while you eat lunch. I hope you found it relaxing, but next time, what can you do differently? Top
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
High Falutin' Goofy Talk
- Business speech and business writing are sometimes little more than high falutin' goofy talk, filled
with pretentious, overused images and puff phrases of unknown meaning. Here are some phrases that are
so common that we barely notice them.
What Haven't I Told You?
- When a project team hits a speed bump, it often learns that it had all the information it needed to
avoid the problem, sometimes months in advance of uncovering it. Here's a technique for discovering
this kind of knowledge more systematically.
The Deck Chairs of the Titanic: Obvious Waste
- Among the most futile and irrelevant actions ever taken in crisis is rearranging the deck chairs of
the Titanic, which, of course, never actually happened. But in the workplace, we engage in
activities just as futile and irrelevant, often outside our awareness. Recognition is the first step
to prevention.
Contextual Causes of Conflict: I
- When destructive conflict erupts, we usually hold responsible only the people directly involved. But
the choices of others, and general circumstances, can be the real causes of destructive conflict.
Wacky Words of Wisdom: VI
- Adages, aphorisms, and "words of wisdom" seem valid often enough that we accept them as universal
and permanent. Most aren't. Here's Part VI of a collection of widely held beliefs that can be misleading
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See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness, Effective Meetings, Critical Thinking at Work and Problem Solving and Creativity for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 1: The Big Power of Little Words
- Big, fancy words, like commensurate or obfuscation, tend to be more noticed than the little everyday words, like yet or best. That might be why the little words can be so much more powerful, steering conversations where their users want them to go. Available here and by RSS on February 1.
And on February 8: Kerfuffles That Seem Like Something More
- Much of what we regard as political conflict is a series of squabbles commonly called kerfuffles. They captivate us while they're underway, but after a month or two they're forgotten. Why do they happen? Why do they persist? Available here and by RSS on February 8.
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