Meeting etiquette

[sawyl]

Extremely wise words from Guy Browning on the subject of meetings in today's Guardian:

Half of every working day is spent in meetings, half of which are not worth having, and of those that are, half the time is wasted. Which means that nearly one third of office life is spent in small rooms with people you don't like, doing things that don't matter. The only reason people have so many meetings is that they are the one time you can get away from your work, your phone and your customers. People say that the secret of a good meeting is preparation. But if people really prepared for meetings, the first thing they would realise is that most are unnecessary. In fact, a tightly run meeting is one of the most frightening things in office life. These are meetings for which you have to prepare, in which you have to work and after which you have to take action. Fortunately, these meetings are as rare as a sense of gay abandon in the finance department.

I remember a particularly appalling meeting in which one of the participants, after arriving late, excused himself saying that his previous meeting had overrun — instead of taking an hour, it had taken four so far and showed no signs of winding down when he left...