So, lousy manager that you are, you’ve decided to waste everybody else’s time, huh? Great! Profits were too high, anyway! Well, if you want to waste everybody’s time, here’s a short list at conducting one of the greatest time-wasters in any organization: useless meetings.Follow these steps, and your meetings will soon become the most mind-numbing, time-wasting, spirit-crushing endeavors you could ever let loose on an organization. Useless meetings could easily be the top tool of most managers — bad managers, especially.
Number one: Start late. It’s clear your staff shouldn’t have any real reason to start a meeting on time. After all, if they had anything worthwhile to do, they wouldn’t be working for you! Start your meetings late…the later the better. After a few weeks, your staff will be just as late to the meetings as you are — and then you can reschedule them to start the meetings later still.Starting meetings late gives your staff a chance to talk amongst themselves while they’re waiting for you to show up — plus, it’s an excellent method to show them who is really in charge.
Number two: Never have a purpose to a meeting. If you want to be a world-class, time-wasting manager, this is your ace in the hole. Meetings held with no purpose in mind waste people’s time like nothing else in a manager’s handbook. In fact, most meetings have no real reason behind them. They’re held because they’ve “always” been held. When you actually have a purpose to a meeting, you risk the chance you might actually get something done. No self-respecting bureaucrat can risk that chance. Why, once you actually get something done, employees might actually feel good about accomplishing something. You can’t risk that!
Number three: Never prepare an agenda. Agendas are useless, since people (especially you) never stick to them anyway. Let the meeting wander however and wherever it will. Eventually, most meetings degrade into three different meetings, held concurrently in the same room, as various group members spend their time talking about sports, intra-office romance, and that nasty mess in the office refrigerator.
Number four: Never set an ending time. Letting meetings drag on forever is a useful tactic to suppress office morale. Start early in the morning, and order in lunch if necessary. Repeat the following day. This wastes so much time and resources, you’ll have to hire additional staff. This brings you a big bonus: additional staff means more employees for you to supervise, which means higher wages for you! The downside is you’ll have to remember to order towels to clean up drool from sleeping workers.
Number five: Keep changing your mind, or refuse to make a decision. Lively discussion is useful in any organization, but pointless discussion is a useful time-waster you can use to your advantage. Keep discussion running by changing your mind every ten minutes. If it appears a consensus is about to break out, detour any movement toward a solution. Agreement is an evil concept that must be stamped out in any organization, since it undermines your managerial control.
Number six: Talk about how the organization needs better meetings, but never do anything about it. Bring the topic up frequently. Hire consultants to spend meeting time teaching how to hold an effective meeting. Use the next meeting to review what the consultant said. After completely discussing the consultant’s advice, ignore the advice — and the discussion.
Number seven: Never form teams to study out and report. Self-governing teams can be a useful mechanism to cut back on bureaucracy — therefore, you must avoid these at all costs. Demand that each decision be brought before the meeting and discussed by all present. After each possible decision has been discussed, table each discussion until a later meeting.
Number eight: When you actually do something, never bring it up. You’re in charge, and it never serves your interests when people actually know what’s going on. Refuse to talk about upcoming projects. If people demand answers, assign status reports to the least-effective person on your staff.
Number nine: Always call another meeting. Meetings serve you well in your movement to the top. When higher staff calls, it’s useful for them to hear “he’s in a meeting.” Your bosses will see the meetings and think you know what you’re doing — and make them think you’re actually doing something. Remember: the longer your meetings, the more they think you’re accomplishing. Of course, the longer the meetings, the less you will actually accomplish.
