One more reason I don’t regret not accepting an invitation to act up into my former manager’s role: the insistence on the exec team on in-person meetings which could just as easily—and effectively—be conducted online.
So it is that the poor chap who took the role must set out on a two-hour jaunt from a rural village to a remote office in the city, hard to reach by public transport, to sit in a room with the bigwigs because…
Well, nobody really knows why this has to be an in-person meeting, especially with that £20K Surface Hub sitting unused in the corner of the room, that was supposed to make hybrid meetings a seamless experience.
Maybe the tech is just too complex for our esteemed leaders. But for the rest of us? Actually, for many of us, video meetings have been a tool of liberation. Not least that “hand up” button, which allows everyone to speak and be heard—yes, even the quiet introverts.
We’re the ones who, in in-person meetings, get talked over constantly, or cut off mid-sentence. Whereas in online meetings, people have learned to be polite, enabling every voice to be heard. Amazing!
But our leaders don’t see it that way, still believing there is no substitute to getting everyone in a big room to listen to opinionated extroverts talking to each other about topics that could just as easily have been covered in a quick email.
Theirs is a different world to the rest of us. For my colleague, it will be a wasted, frustrating day, piling up more work to do at some other point. But I suppose that’s leadership for you: it’s not really about doing work. It’s about discussing work others will do.
I wonder which mug will end up doing whatever it is they’re planning to discuss today at great length. Ah, but alas, I have already been warned! Brace yourselves.
Last modified: 19 November 2024
