Staff Meetings (Yuck!)

 

Staff Meetings: A Bold Experiment in Seeing How Long Humans Can Sit Without Screaming

By Someone Who Has Attended Far Too Many

Staff meetings are a cornerstone of modern civilization. They are how organizations ensure that important information is conveyed, morale is steadily eroded, and no one escapes with a sense of accomplishment.

A staff meeting typically begins with the phrase, “Let’s give everyone a few minutes to join,” which translates to: We will now sit in silence while staring at our phones, pretending to read emails we are definitely not reading. This period can last anywhere from three minutes to the remainder of your natural life.

Once everyone has arrived—except for Steve, who “had an emergency”, or Sally who had "Tech issues" despite owning $4,000 worth of equipment—the meeting officially starts. There is usually an "ice breaker" activity which literally NO ONE wants to do. It usually involves everyone breaking into their pre-arranged cliques and talking about ANYTHING on Earth, other than the expected topic. 

The leader will eventually say, “This meeting shouldn't take long,” a phrase historians now recognize as a ritual incantation meant to ward off time itself. It never works. It's also a lie. Because there will always be questions. You know the old saying "there are no such thing as dumb questions"? Well whoever made up that phrase never sat in a staff meeting. Because, GEEZ, people dream up some egregiously stupid questions. So stupid you wonder how they can even feed themselves. 

The next phase is the AGENDA, a mysterious document sent in advance and not read by anyone, including the person who wrote it. The agenda contains bullet points such as “Updates,” “Discussion,” and “Next Steps,” which are staff-meeting terms meaning “rambling,” “uncontrolled rambling,” and “we will circle back.”

At some point, someone will say, “Get with me after the meeting,” which is meeting-language for we will absolutely never speak of this again. Another participant will suggest, “We should put a pin in that,” which is not a real solution and has never involved an actual pin, despite what the phrase implies.

Every staff meeting includes at least one person who says they have a question, says nothing for 47 minutes and the question requires everyone to revisit everything from the beginning. This person is not doing this on purpose. They are fulfilling an ancient role described in corporate mythology as “The Waster of Time.”

There is also the Optimist, who refers to the meeting as a "conversation.” This is never true. It is, at best, "conversation adjacent". The Optimist is usually followed by The Historian, who begins a sentence with, “Back in 2014, when we tried something similar…” and proceeds to recite a detailed oral history that no one requested and everyone regrets.

Modern staff meetings often rely on PowerPoint presentations, which are slideshows designed to prove that reading words off a screen out loud makes them more impactful. These slides are carefully crafted using fonts that appear friendly but are somehow aggressive. Every slide contains too much text except the one that says “Questions?” which appears despite the universal agreement that there should be none.

Then there is the Action Items portion of the meeting, during which tasks are assigned in a way that ensures no one is quite sure who is responsible for what. The phrase “Let’s all take ownership of this” is used, meaning no one owns this and it will drift into the void.

Finally, the meeting ends 15 minutes late, at which point the leader says, “Thanks, everyone,” and participants respond by immediately bolting for the door, like startled deer, leaving behind only the echo of productivity and a calendar notification for the follow-up meeting.

Every single thing the meeting covered could have been handled in an email. They know it. We know it. Yet we all participate in the charade so the leaders can feel all leader-y.

In conclusion, staff meetings are vital (they tell us). Without them, how would we know what we are already doing, why we are behind on it, and that we will “revisit this next quarter”? They are the glue that holds organizations together, primarily because they prevent anyone from escaping long enough to do actual work. Also it gives the higher ups a chance to look like they are important, instead of walking around bored all day, pretending to actually work, instead of just obsessing on where they will eat lunch on that particular day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another meeting starting in two minutes that could have been an email, and an email starting in two minutes that could have been nothing at all.