Meeting

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A meeting is what happens when a colleague unilaterally asserts that his agenda is more important than yours. Though, of course, meetings can be benign and even fruitful — few of history’s monsters have been wholly without redeeming feature — convening a meeting is a profoundly political act and, however well-intended, most of what goes on in them has a starkly political aspect.

Meetings are thus best avoided, and any adept survivor will have developed detailed tactics for doing so. Like these ones.

Like a conference call, only without phones, it’s much harder (though not impossible, depending on how brazen you are) to multi-task, and impossible to go on mute.

“Important” meetings are often stewarded by a functionary from the COO office — a “project manager” or “workstream lead” —who gets to watch the the grisly proceedings up close, occasionally twisting the knife with an “innocent” question or even going full Crazy Ivan.

Although nominally no more than a court clerk, a “PM” can skew their role to resemble one of the master’s attack dogs. Depending on the disposition of that person chairing the meeting, it can, therefore, be quite the cat-bird seat: rather like walking around the rim of a volcano in one of those big silver spaceman suits watching everyone else in tee-shirts and flip-flops hopping about trying to dodge flying magma.

Never, ever, to be described as a “meet”. “Meets” happen in swimming pools and on running tracks.

See also

• Meeting avoidance tactics
• Crazy Ivan
• Meet
• All-hands conference call