{"id":1860,"date":"2015-02-02T01:56:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T06:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1860"},"modified":"2015-01-12T09:05:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T14:05:43","slug":"the-purpose-of-most-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2015\/02\/the-purpose-of-most-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"The Purpose of Most Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

Contrary to management theory, meetings are not about (1) information or (2) decision. They are about nice people in a nice setting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had always been taught that there are two types of meetings:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. ones in which the group decided something<\/li>\n
  2. ones in which information was provided to the group<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Hearing those items over and over again confused me for years. The vast majority of meetings I attended fell into neither of those two categories. I needed years of confusing experiences to notice that most meetings\u2014probably 90%\u2014served another purpose:<\/p>\n

    the meeting allowed nice people to spend some nice time together in a nice setting<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The person presiding over the meeting needed a break from the slings and arrows of outrage that filled the day. The person wanted to have a nice time\u2014a nice chat with nice people.<\/p>\n

    Why not take the meeting across the street to McDonald’s?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    You just didn’t do something like that. Meeting at McDonald’s, or some other favorite place of nice-ness, would be too obvious. The facade of the meeting being one of the only two official reasons to have a meeting would be shattered, and we all know that shattering time-honored facades is against all rules of decent behavior.<\/p>\n

    Too bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Dwayne Phillips Contrary to management theory, meetings are not about (1) information or (2) decision. They are about nice people in a nice setting. I had always been taught that there are two types of meetings: ones in which the group decided something ones in which information was provided to the group Hearing those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,9,25],"tags":[181,132,147],"class_list":["post-1860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magic","category-management","category-meetings","tag-magic","tag-management","tag-meetings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1861,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions\/1861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}