Yet More Ways to Waste a Meeting

From time to time, I hear about new ways to waste time in meetings. Or I realize that a time-waster so popular years ago has gone out of fashion, but is now making a comeback. When I notice enough of these, I post them, hoping to suppress them at least a little bit. This edition is divided into three categories.

Especially for meeting participants

• Skip the meeting even though you know your presence is essential.
• Attend the meeting, but don't prepare for the meeting's agenda.
• Arrive late to the meeting and raise an issue that the others who arrived before you have already dealt with. See "Costs of the Catch-Me-Up Antipattern: I," Point Lookout for August 10, 2016, for more.
• Conceal as best you can your near-total lack of understanding of the basic concepts required for participating in this meeting. Use skills from your early education that enabled you to write book reports for books you never read beyond page 18.
• Employ rhetorical trickery: ad hominem attacks, begging the question, slippery slope, straw man, or any of dozens more rhetorical fallacies.
• Speak for at least 15 seconds before realizing you forgot to unmute yourself.
• Don't execute action items that you accepted at a previous meeting.
• Knowingly spread misinformation.
• Even though you're the Chief Whatever Officer and you're pretty much clueless about the details of whatever the group is doing, "sit in" (with no advance notice) to demonstrate your interest in whatever the group is doing. See "When Power Attends the Meeting," Point Lookout for November 26, 2003, for more.

When working with others on a document

Virtual collaborations are always tricky, but virtual collaborations that author documents are especially difficult. Said differently, they offer a wide variety of opportunities to waste meetings. Here are just a few.

• Propose a material change that has been previously rejected.
• Propose a material change that has been previously accepted using different words.
• Propose a change that has no material effect.
• Propose a change to a section of the document that was deleted two versions ago.
• Propose a change to the font.
• If you aren't very fussy or particular, pretend to be.
• If you're very fussy or particular, act naturally.
• After the meeting, as meeting Scribe, when entering for later review the changes everyone agreed to in this meeting, make some changes of your own without indicating what they are.

Especially for Meeting Chairs

• Spend precious meeting time making announcements that could have been distributed in advance electronically.
• Have an agenda so over-stuffed with unimportant or non-urgent matters that no item that is both urgent and important gets the attention it deserves. See "A Framework for Safe Storming," Point Lookout for January 29, 2025, for more.
• Even though our one and only expert on this agenda item hasn't yet arrived, start anyway because time is short and nobody is so important that they're indispensable.
• Distribute the agenda days in advance, but then change the agenda one hour in advance to accommodate someone who's way overloaded but way powerful.
• Let the meeting run over its published end time so we can finish what we have to do. If some people might be late to their next meeting ask them to convey apologies and say it couldn't be helped.
• Never, ever intervene when the meeting's Resident Bully forces the group to accept an unacceptable mission expansion, budget cut, or schedule squeeze.
• Have the meeting work on something for 20 minutes that some other group instead of ours is now doing, but we don't know that.
• Reject suggestions that the discussion shows signs of confirmation bias, because we've had cognitive bias training so we're no longer vulnerable.
• Permit the videoconference to continue even though 2/3 of the participants are refusing to turn on their cameras. See "Off-Putting and Conversational Narcissism at Work: III," Point Lookout for December 6, 2023, for more.

Last words

Every group, How to waste a meeting: Have an agenda so
over-stuffed with unimportant or non-urgent
matters that no item that is both urgent and
important gets the attention it deserves.in whatever developmental stage it is, operates by executing patterns of behavior. The patterns listed here are dysfunctional, in that they hinder the group in its efforts to execute its mission. The term of art for them is antipatterns. Avoiding antipatterns is a bit easier if we know (a) which antipatterns we're likely to employ in a given class of situations, and (b) which patterns would be more effective. This post is a start on (a). For the b's, have a look at any of the wonderful books about conducting meetings. My favorite would be titled something like, Conducting Meetings in the 21st Century Workplace, if it existed. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything quite like that yet. Might have to write it. If you find it, rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.complease send me a link.  Top  

Do 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!

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

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

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Effective Meetings:

Speak for Influence

Among the factors that determine the influence of contributions in meetings are the content of the contribution and how it fits into the conversation. Most of the time, we focus too much on content and not enough on fit.

The Utility Pole Antipattern: II

Complex organizational processes can delay action. They can set people against one other and prevent organizations from achieving their objectives. In this Part II of our examination of these complexities, we look into what keeps processes complicated, and how to deal with them.

The Passion-Professionalism Paradox

Changing the direction of a group or a company requires passion and professionalism, two attributes often in tension. Here's one possible way to resolve that tension.

Brainstorming and Speedstorming: I

Recent research suggests that brainstorming might not be as effective as we would like to believe it is. An alternative, speedstorming, might have some advantages for some teams solving some problems.

Pre-Decision Discussions: Emotions

Some meeting agendas include exploring issues related to upcoming decisions. Although we believe that these discussions lead to rational decisions, some contributions evoke possibly misleading emotional responses. Here are five examples.

See also Effective Meetings and Effective Meetings for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming February 26: Devious Political Tactics: Bad Decisions

When workplace politics influences the exchanges that lead to important organizational decisions, we sometimes make decisions for reasons other than the best interests of the organization. Recognizing these tactics can limit the risk of bad decisions. Available here and by RSS on February 26.

And on March 5: On Begging the Question

Some of our most expensive wrong decisions have come about because we've tricked ourselves as we debated our options. The tricks sometimes arise from rhetorical fallacies that tangle our thinking. One of the trickiest is called Begging the Question. Available here and by RSS on March 5.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info