The problem is not meetings, which can be short, informal and effective – it is committees (The death of hope and productivity. We call it the meeting, 15 September). Committees become fossils – requiring chairpersons, membership (a prime opportunity for corporate hierarchies), agenda, minutes and a regular schedule of meetings.
When I became chairman of Adnams, the Suffolk brewer, in 1996, one of my first and few edicts was to abolish all committees except those that were legally required (the board, health and safety committee etc) and to replace these with small, informal working groups that assembled to deal with particular tasks, kept no minutes but only a few action notes, were forever changing in their non-hierarchical membership (depending on whose expertise was needed at any particular time) and dispersed when the task was done. A few had a longer life, because the subjects of discussion and action were ongoing, but none met for more than an hour.
The result was a transformation in output and enjoyment, and a huge boost to my aim of making the company less formal and hierarchical. Employees were happier, motivated by involvement, pride and a sense of purpose, and the bottom line was transformed. It’s easy, if you have courage.
Simon Loftus
Halesworth, Suffolk
• The solution to the overlong meetings decried by Simon Jenkins is to hold them standing up, just as the privy council has done ever since Queen Victoria initiated the custom in the 1860s to keep proceedings short.
Daily editorial conferences at France’s Le Monde newspaper are held not just standing up, but also at a joyless early hour (07:30 at one time, at least) in a double-whammy disincentive to too much waffle. Some lessons here perhaps.
David Christian-Edwards
Northwood, Middlesex
• Simon Jenkins is absolutely correct. In fact, a development of the Parkinson efficiency rule, where “the efficiency of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of people attending”, more accurately defines their impact. Thus maximum efficiency (100%) is achieved with only one person in the meeting (yourself) and the ultimate efficiency (nirvana) is a meeting with no attendees (ie when nobody even thinks of holding a meeting).
I would also beware the guise of the meeting by another name viz “networking”, or more accurately termed “not working”.
Dr David Williams
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
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