42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

There's only one thing worse than a badly run meeting and that's a well-run meeting. Perhaps if there were fewer of them we would actually do some work says meeting-phobic Guy Browning

Half of every working day is spent in meetings, half of which are not worth having and, of those that are, half the time is wasted. Which means that nearly one third of business life is spent in small rooms with people you don't like, doing things that don't matter. The only reason people have so many meetings is that they're the one time you can get away from your work, your 'phone and your customers.

People say that the secret of a good meeting is preparation. But if people really prepared for meetings, the first thing they would realise is that most are completely unnecessary. In fact, a tightly run meeting is one of the most frightening things in public life. These are meetings before which you have to prepare, during which you have to work and after which you have to take actions. Fortunately, these meetings are as rare as a sense of gay abandon in the finance department.

Time in meetings is always different from real time. A quick ten-minute catch-up can fill a whole morning. One of the reasons for this is that work in meetings doesn't actually start until someone says, "I've got a meeting to go to." A cancelled meeting is the sweetest thing in office life. One way of making your life in the office a lot easier is to book a lot of unnecessary meetings and then cancel 90 per cent of them. This leaves your diary almost completely free for relaxation, or work if you're that way inclined.

When you go on a week's holiday you miss an average ten meetings but, curiously, no one misses you. That's because meetings have a life of their own, regardless of the people in them. The moral of this is, that whenever someone asks you to be in a meeting, say that although nothing would give you more pleasure, sadly you are going to be on holiday. The following week carry a suitcase rather than a briefcase round the office in case someone spots you walking past a meeting you are supposed to be in.

Meetings are a lot like heaters in old taxis – they just recycle hot air until you get a headache and have to open the window. Airtime in meetings is generally hogged by those with the loudest voices and biggest egos. Normally these are the very same people who come up with the worst ideas.

All the best thoughts and ideas in any meeting are had by people who contribute absolutely nothing and sit in total silence. Most meetings are spent either talking about problems arising from work that hasn't been done or talking about work that needs to be done to tackle problems. There are so many of these meetings that there is very little time to do any work or solve any problems, which means only one thing – more meetings.

Breakfast meetings are different from other meetings in that people are asleep at the start rather than at the end. One of the problems with business breakfasts is that you can never eat what you normally have for breakfast. No one's going to be impressed at a top-level meeting if you're tucking into a bowl of Coco Pops. Instead, you have to eat things that only religious zealots and French people would touch, like grapefruit and croissants.