The Conference Call

The Client: “So: has everyone read through the presentation that I sent out last week?”

Eiljert Thinks: “I wrote it. I wrote all of it.”

Eiljert Says: “Yes, thank you.”

Client: “So, I think what would be best is if it we ran through that.”

Eiljert Thinks: “Why? Why don’t we run through the brief that accompanied it and that is riddled with problems and contradictions?”

Eiljert Says: “Fine.”

Client: “So, starting with Slide 1…”

Eiljert Thinks: “Is he going to read the slides aloud? There are over 80 of them.”

Eiljert Says: “Just opening the presentation now…”

We ended the conference call after an hour and a half, during which the Client read me all of  a presentation that I had written, and then finished with “And there is a brief – but we don’t have time to do that now – but I think this has been very productive.”

DO YOU?

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“We Need A Meeting”

Oh shitting hell! Is there any pronouncement more likely to be both simultaneously untrue AND dreadful as the daily pronouncement that is the scourge of my life: “We need a meeting”?

It is a particular favourite of Travesty of All Things Gay (who is quite a one for confusing activity with productivity), but not limited to him: it is a modern industrial malaise. They’re treated as the professional equivalent of an enema: a chance to get a sluggish system moving, to inject a bit of dynamism into a stagnant environment – and there’s an almost evangelical belief in their efficacy. Creative work not being bought? “We need a meeting!”. Strategy not effective? “We need a meeting!”. Client refusing to return your calls, pitching the business and slagging you off to Campaign? “We need a meeting!”

Bollocks. What one needs, of course, is decisions – what I think is very much up for debate is whether or nor one needs a meeting to get them. In my experience, meetings tend to be fora for showboating, political posturing and point-scoring; rather than an environment in which things can get done. They also seem to be assuming the status of weddings and Christenings in that the issue of who is invited to these sanctioned wastes of time is seen as being some sort of marker of importance and personal worth: “Do they want ME in the meeting” having become the adman’s version of the lover’s “Do you still fancy me?” as an index of worth. It’s all very bizarre.

Today was a case in point: Enthusiastic Account Guy, Travesty of All Things Gay, Planner with Austrian Hair and I all went off for a meeting that would have been better replaced with an exchange of three documents via e-mail and then a ten minute conversation. Traveling ten minutes in a taxi for this sort of waste of time is one thing: flying to Thailand (as I am about to) to do the same thing, is rather different…

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The Choice

A previous incumbent in my professional role had this to say: “You can either do the meetings, or you can do the work – not both.”

The cult of the meeting is one of the most deceptive, destructive and irritating to have pushed its way into modern business practice. Second only to “the workshop” with its pernicious and provenly incorrect contention that “the more people one gets in the room, the greater degree of creativity and consensus”, “the meeting” prioritises sharing coffee and flipcharts over productivity, thinking and action. The number of times I have finished one meeting to be met with a response which is broadly “Great, OK. When should we meet again?” is bewildering and staggering.

It’s not therapy: it doesn’t have to be regular to work – and the meetings should be the consequence of the thinking and the creativity, not entirely removed from them in order to fit in with some bizarre matrix of holidays, acronym-denominated meetings and travel plans. I realise that there are such things as real deadlines that have to be met if products are to get to market and to realise their potential, but artificial deadlines do not concentrate the mind, nor help to make things better – they dispirit, dissipate and disenchant.

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The Eternal Meeting

Yesterday, my meeting started at 10am and finished at 5.50pm.

I am tempted to leave that as the sum total of this entry, as I feel convinced that right-thinking people everywhere will know what that means, and the expressions of condolence will start flooding in. But I never could leave well enough alone, so I feel compelled to comment and gloss.

How the frigging, arsing fuck is anyone supposed to be effective over the course of that time of time span? We remained constant, but an ever-changing litany of Clients came in for creative presentations (admittedly with a different group of creatives every time) as Sofa Gonk, Fembot and I reviewed work on five brands. The saving grace was that all the work was magnificent, with one idea that is (if we make it) being the best piece of work I’ll have done in my career (which is a scary, depressing and exhilirating thought).

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