Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 16, Issue 26;   June 29, 2016: How to Waste Time in Virtual Meetings

How to Waste Time in Virtual Meetings

by

Nearly everyone hates meetings, and virtual meetings are at the top of most people's lists. Here's a catalog of some of the worst practices.
A Great Grey Owl

A Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa). Some birds aren't angry. Some are sleepy.

We've already explored how we waste time in meetings generally (See "How to Waste Time in Meetings," Point Lookout for June 22, 2016). But wasting time in virtual meetings requires special techniques. Here's a little catalog of the most popular methods for wasting time in virtual meetings. It's probably unnecessary to say this, but just to be safe: these are bad ideas. Learn to recognize them, but don't do them.

Let's begin with things chairs can do to waste everyone's time:

  • Choose a meeting access password with characters that have multiple names, or which can be misread easily, like z, #, 0, O, o, 1, l, and |.
  • Ten minutes before the meeting, delay the meeting by two hours.
  • Schedule multiple-time-zone meetings for times when the people most important to the agenda would otherwise be fast asleep.
  • If technical difficulties occur, sort them out while everyone waits, no matter how long, up to the full length of the meeting.

And now some things everyone can do (not):

  • Don't do any meeting pre-work. If asked, deny having received the pre-work.
  • For Web-based slide presentations, don't install the software. Say, "IT tried, but they'll get it done next week for sure." If IT succeeded, claim, "They didn't get the right plug-in."
  • When preparing documents for meetings, send several corrected versions beforehand, none of them dated or numbered. Send the final version 15 minutes before the meeting.
  • Speak only when someone else is already speaking. When he or she stops speaking, stop. When he or she restarts, restart. Repeat until one of you surrenders.
  • Mumble.
  • Speak only when chewing food. It's easier to mumble.
  • If you don't understand someone, ask for it to be repeated. Don't use context to make sense of it.
  • If someone asks you to repeat yourself, say it completely differently. Don't let people figure it out from repetition.
  • Practice saying: "I'm a visual person, I don't understand. Please describe it differently."
  • Periodically disconnect yourself from the meeting. Upon rejoining, ask for a recap.All wireless service plans
    include free mid-sentence
    disconnection service
  • To avoid disconnecting yourself, use a cellphone. All wireless service plans include free mid-sentence disconnection service.
  • Even if you aren't using a cellphone, when you need a break, say, "I'm coming up on a dead spot. If I get disconnected, I'll call back." Then disconnect and relax.
  • To convince people that you're on a cellphone, say, "Does <silence> know why HR <silence> tomorrow?"
  • Ignore the meeting. Mute yourself while playing Angry Birds. If your name is mentioned twice in close succession, unmute and say, "Sorry, I was muted. What was that again?"
  • Call from an airport while standing under a public address speaker. And don't mute your phone.
  • If you're presenting using a presentation system you've never used before, don't practice beforehand. There's no software you can't get the hang of in a couple minutes, except maybe Angry Birds.

Finally, take advantage of the miserable communications environment in virtual meetings to manipulate the group into making a truly horrible decision, the folly of which won't become clear until after the point of no return. First in this series  Go to top Top  Next issue: Cognitive Biases and Influence: I  Next Issue

101 Tips for Effective MeetingsDo you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!

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This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

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Related articles

More articles on Effective Meetings:

Out of the actionThe Shape of the Table
Not only was the meeting running over, but it now seemed that the entire far end of the table was having its own meeting. Why are some meetings like this?
A rock climber in Joshua Tree National Park, United StatesLet Me Finish, Please
We use meetings to exchange information and to explore complex issues. In open discussion, we tend to interrupt each other. Interruptions can be disruptive, distracting, funny, essential, and frustratingly common. What can we do to limit interruptions without depriving ourselves of their benefits?
A single-strand knotTangled Thread Troubles
Even when we use a facilitator to manage a discussion, managing a queue for contributors can sometimes lead to problems. Here's a little catalog of those difficulties.
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In some teams, members feel so overloaded that they try to avoid any additional tasks. Here are some of the most popular patterns of action item avoidance.
President Obama meets with leaders about job creation, December 3, 2009Naming Ideas
Participants in group discussions sometimes reference each other's contributions using the contributor's name. This risks offending the contributor or others who believe the idea is theirs. Naming ideas is less risky.

See also Effective Meetings and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting that's probably a bit too largeComing March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
An informal meeting in a loungeAnd on March 27: Allocating Action Items
From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.

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