Meeting Accepted: The Great Rush of Returning To Work
The lazy hazy days are over. And now, to work. And the great panic of corporate scheduling. As the summer break closes, it’s not so much the prospect of work itself that burdens our rash-vested souls. We enjoy the actual work. For many, the corporate world is a place of collegiality, challenge, purpose and connection. The ties that bind and propel us. We like all that, as a species.
No, the malaise of returning to work is borne of a knowledge that our time is no longer our own. That it instead belongs to one unending, year-long jam of meetings, offsites, flights, calls, emails and the general dyspepsia of packing too much in.
Our dilemma is that the same over-scheduling is accepted, unquestioned. It’s due to the pace of change in our world today, we say. That’s what leadership is, we nod, sagely, in line for morning caffeination while we ignore the February sun, beckoning us back to relaxation, to a book and a siesta.
The knock-on effects – the perpetual pre-reads that must be drafted and polished, the assaulted assistants booking meetings and flights, the hapless hangers-on who must prepare for every possible eventuality depending on a meeting outcome – are interminable. And so it builds. Until every conversation starts with a general agreement about how impossibly busy we all are.
By halfway through February, we have become a collective shadow of our January board-shorted-selves. And by March, the whole summer holiday seems like an historical artefact which we no longer understand: we’ve bowed to the inevitable as the all day shudder of rush and hurry runs down our spines and we suffer the bizarre conceit that this is necessary.
I’ve never known anyone to say that this is good for business. And it’s not. Meetings are scheduled yes, but often unproductive: outcomes are non-existent, creating the need for more meetings, more pre-reads, etc. You follow my line.
As for decision-making, navigating ambiguity and creating imaginative solutions, over-scheduling is the worst-possible way to do all of that. Ideas and imagination, problem-solving and curiosity activate in theta brain waves. That can only happen when we’re daydreaming. When we’re in the business of hurry, we’re in beta waves, which are all about the activity and transaction. No big ideas from those.
So if we know both the misery and fruitlessness of this great panic, why do we do it?
Mostly, because we accept that it's just the way things are. Sometimes, the over-committing is a symptom caused by achievement-orientation, a belief that it constitutes good leadership: “I’m everywhere I’m asked to be, so that means I’m a good leader.” The spirit is to be applauded of course. It’s all high-achieving stuff, seductive in its supposed virtue. And wholly misguided. Bertrand Russell tells us “only a foolish asceticism…makes us continue to insist on work in excessive quantities.” He was praising idleness of course, and I’m not. But he knew foolishness when he saw it.
A packed diary does not a great leader make, as someone once said about Summer and a swallow. A packed diary might demonstrate an addiction to activity. It might demonstrate mindless yes-ism. But not much else.
Great leadership is demonstrated in the way one conducts oneself: how we treat others, how we inspire with our messages, and in our ethics, our integrity and expertise. Roosevelt’s Man was in The Arena, not a 2pm video conference. So, what to do, to liberate self and beloved work chums from this cycle of despair? There are two truths which are at once equally hateful and liberating: first that there will always be more asks than there is time, and second that no one is going to set your boundaries for you – you must set them and hold them yourself. In one reading of these truths, you’re endlessly frustrated that you have no time to yourself and feeling resentful because no one else is considering everything else you’ve got on.
But in another, more hopeful view, you’re accepting peacefully your inability to be everywhere at once, and you’re empowering yourself to be clear and strong about that.
The problem, you see, is not the dancers. The problem is the dance. So, there’s a choice: do a different dance. Insist that all meetings are created with clear outcome-based agendas and chaired properly. If there’s no explicit outcome, decline. Binary, yes. But, really, you’re operating from the highest possible good – you don’t want to waste your own time, or anyone else’s. The meeting requests will sometimes disappear. Other times, you’ll use the time together far more wisely. The outcome might be simply that someone wants to get to know you. Good, fine, plenty of that in leadership. Better to know and prepare accordingly.
“By halfway through February, we have become a collective shadow of our January board-shorted-selves.”
30 minutes should be your default setting for meetings, by the way, not an hour. Leave the meeting when the clock says it’s over, don’t stay later. A pre-read should be sent though no less than 48 business hours prior, which will give you time to think, deliberate and ask for opinions before the meeting. That’s better for decision-making.
You can clear time during the day – shock! horror! - for expansive thinking and divergent reading so that the ideas may bubble and flow. Ex-Prime Minister and general stirrer Paul Keating decries the modern pack-it-in way: as PM he would spend a morning each week listening to classical music and letting his thoughts drift. If you had told him that was about theta waves he may have verbally bludgeoned you about psychological claptrap. Still, he knew intuitively that it was his best time to solve problems.
And so now it is back to work. And the call to do a different dance, or slip back into a more familiar, yet inefficient, modus operandi. An over-scheduled diary is not the ends of humanity. Our success (or otherwise) rests on the central paradox of leadership: great leadership of others is founded on the great leadership of self.
And that starts with how we respond to the next meeting request.
