Meeting to meeting, corporate life tires itself out

Meetings, meetings…

Most organisations, private or public, thrive on meetings. Announced at the drop of a hat, before you know it, people congregate in conference halls and auditoriums. Of course, there are planned meetings with differing schedules that could ruin your weekends with sleepless hours likely to take a toll on your peace of mind.

You are expected to be battle- ready with all your notes and with answers to ominous questions on your fingertips. At these meetings, tortuous deadlines are pronounced with a grim non-negotiable finality that stalked you wherever you went, be it the lunch room, recreation room, wash room or library. Our lives are measured out in endless meetings, interminable reviews and tired justifications of status quo.

When we joined corporates for the comfortable careers we dreamt of and coveted the corner room in the distant future, we did not bargain for the number of meetings we had to attend, the mandatory ones that arrived on date, those called performance reviews, budget meetings where budgets were imposed on the hapless workforce to achieve the corporate targets or corporate policies to be implemented.

Meetings sometimes degenerated into desultory affairs far from being meaningful without a clear agenda, endless discussions that did not resolve into any concrete decisions. A group of people who talk for hours to produce a result called minutes. However not all meetings were purposeless; there were those that that set clear guidelines and schedules, where debate and discussion took place with heat and light, where genuine performers were appreciated and under-performers were encouraged to give a better account of themselves, and non-performers were gently reprimanded or cautioned so that it struck home and they almost always performed much better.

The powers that be who presided over those meetings were a motley lot, those with empathy who could tell us where we went wrong and improve and those who were unforgiving and demolished us with a word. One or two even had a literary flair and would quote with aplomb. When a colleague demurred and doubted his capabilities to handle a particular project he was told in no uncertain terms: “You can do it.” Our doubts are our traitors. A less sympathetic boss once remarked with a smirk, “Hell hath no fury like a boss enraged.”

While we resented meetings for eating into our productive work time, we also saw them as a meeting place for all of us who though working in adjoining rooms had rarely time to meet except of course for the brief water cooler or coffee machine moments. There were also welcome and farewell gatherings that were lighter and happier occasions and the sad condolence meetings for well-loved departed colleagues.

As time passed and on our way up the corporate ladder we too presided over meetings, fielded questions, set deadlines and wondered what our junior colleagues thought of us. Before long time caught up further with us, we hung up our boots and when memory rustles once in a while we are back in the board room or auditorium hearing sonorous voices of old times, sometimes severe, sometimes judgmental, sometimes kind sometimes appreciative and our own voices too. Nothing will bring back those days of bonhomie and happy camaraderie.

sudhadevi_nayak@yahoo.com