Meeting of the minds not always the case

In case you have missed it, Australia has been in the grip of a leadership tussle. The rich kid who was reluctant to hand over his bag of lollies to the bullies showed some belated leadership that the rest of us could do well to emulate. I am talking about Malcolm Turnbull’s admirable refusal to hold a meeting when his colleagues asked for one.

Just imagine how our working lives could be enhanced if we all followed Turnbull’s example and resisted meetings with all our might.

It is not that meetings cannot be useful and effective (which is precisely why Petter Dutton wanted one and Turnbull feared it might be too effective), it is that too frequently meetings are convened with vague agendas, involving too many people who really do not need to be in the room or online, and then they are poorly run.

Having a clear agenda is no guarantee that a meeting will be useful or effective. Most well-organised meetings have an agenda circulated in advance, but rarely are there unambiguous objectives articulated for meetings.

It is much more likely that meetings will have vague objectives reflected in the agenda such as ‘‘to consider changing leaders every 3 days to keep everyone on their toes’’ as opposed to ‘‘come to bury Caesar. Brutus to speak to the motion’’.