Who needs meetings? Except managers, of course

It is difficult, even for the most seasoned managers — whether in government or the private sector — to come up with ways to inspire their subordinates through the drudgery that marks most careers. Take the following sentence: “A career is a bridge, and sometimes it needs a civil engineer.” Does it carry hidden wisdom or is it trite? Clearly, the problem of being inspirational is exercising a figure no less exalted than India’s top bureaucrat. In a two-page note accompanied by 10 pages of guidelines on how to conduct meetings sent to all secretaries to the Government of India, Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan has asked stalwarts of India’s steel frame a vexing question : Are they gaining “30 years’ experience or one year’s experience repeated 30 times”? Much of Somanathan’s advice resonates beyond the government, to anyone who has ever attended an unending series of meetings in a day. This broad swathe of white-collar workers can attest to the fact that, more often than not, the preparation for the meeting to discuss progress on the work promised at the last meeting ends up becoming the work itself. And the ability to make a presentation with a plethora of graphs is more significant for career advancement than the quality of the work the PPT purports to showcase. The cabinet secretary’s caution against meetings that “tend to start late, be overstretched and directionless, and often lead to no tangible ‘takeaways’” is well taken. But perhaps, it misses a deeper point. The meeting is for the manager. The purpose of the meeting, more often than not, is to justify that role. In such a context, what’s the difference between “30 years of experience” and “a year’s experience repeated 30 times”?