6. For discussion

• What do you think of Henry Ford’s commitment to create employee-friendly working environment? Can such expenditures be reasonable and economically justifiable in the long run?

• What do latter-day employers try to do foster healthy relationship? Do they do it of their free will?

■ 4.7 H. Sorry, He’s in Conference

How much of your time at work today will be spent at meetings? How much of that time was really spent working? Jean-Louis Barsoux on an essential part of management

Managers spend a great deal of their time in meetings. According to Henry Mintzberg, in his book. The Nature of Managerial Work, managers in large organizations spend only 22 per cent of their time at their desks, but 69 per cent of their time in meetings. So what are the man­agers doing in those meetings?

There have conventionally been two answers. The first is the academic version: managers are coordinating and controlling, making decisions, solving prob­lems and planning. This interpre­tation has been largely discredited because it ignores the social and political forces at work in meet­ings.

The second version claims that meetings provide little more than strategic sites for corporate gladi­ators to perform before the organ­izational emperors. This perspec­tive is far more attractive, and has given rise to a large, and often humorous, body of literature on gamesmanship and posturing in meetings.

It is of course, true that meet­ing rooms serve as shop windows for managerial talent, but this is far from the whole truth. The sug­gestion that meetings are essen­tially battle grounds is misleading since the raison d'etre of meet­ings has far more to do with com­fort than conflict. Meetings are actually vital props, both for the participants and the organization as a whole.

For the organization, meetings represent recording devices. The minutes of meetings catalogue the changing face of the organization, at all levels, in a more systematic way than do the assorted memos and directives which are scattered about the company. They enshrine the minutiae of corporate history, they itemize proposed actions and outcomes in a way which makes one look like the natural culmination of the other.

The whole tenor of the minutes is one of total premeditation and implied continuity. They are a sanitized version of reality which suggests a reassuring level of con­trol over events. What is more, the minutes record the debating of certain issues in an official and democratic forum, so that those not involved in the process can be assured that the decision was not taken lightly.

As Doug Bennett, an adminis­trative and finance manager with Allied Breweries, explains: "Time and effort are seen to have been invested in scrutinizing a certain course of action."

Key individuals are also seen to have put their names behind that particular course of action. The decision can therefore proceed with the full weight of the organization behind it, even if it actually went through "on the nod". At the same time, the burden of respon­sibility is spread, so that no indi­vidual takes the blame should disaster strike.

Thus, the public nature of for­mal meetings confers a degree of legitimacy on what happens in them. Having a view pass unchal­lenged at a meeting can be taken to indicate consensus.

However, meetings also serve as an alibi for inaction, as demon­strated by one manager who explained to his subordinates: "I did what I could to prevent it - I had our objections minuted in two meetings." The proof of conspic­uous effort was there in black and white.

By merely attending meetings, managers buttress their status, while non-attendance can carry with it a certain stigma. Whether individual managers intend to make a contribution or not, it is satisfying to be considered one of those whose views matter. Ostracism, for senior managers, is not being invited to meetings.

As one cynic observed, meet­ings are comfortingly tangible: "Who on the shop floor really believes that managers are work­ing when they tour the works? But assemble them behind closed doors and call it a meeting and everyone will take it for granted that they are hard at work." Managers are being seen to earn their corn.

Meetings provide managers with another form of comfort too - that of familiarity. Meetings fol­low a set format: exchanges are ritualized, the participants are probably known in advance, there is often a written agenda, and there is a chance to prepare. Little wonder then, that they come as welcome relief from the upheaval and uncertainty of life outside the meeting room.

Managers can draw further comfort from the realization that their peers are every bit as bemused and fallible as them­selves. Meetings provide constant reminders that they share the same problems, preoccupations and anxieties, that they are all in the same boat. And for those who may be slightly adrift, meetings are ideal occasions for gently pulling them round.

As Steve Styles, the process control manager (life services) at Legal & General, puts it: "The mere presence of others in meet­ings adds weight to teasing or censure and helps you to 'round up the strays'." Such gatherings therefore provide solace and direction for the management team - a security blanket for man­agers.

Meetings do serve a multitude of means as well as ends. They relieve managerial stress and facilitate consensus. For the organization, they have a safety-net-cum-rubber-stamping func­tion without which decisions could not progress, much less gather momentum. In short, meet­ings are fundamental to the well-being of managers and organizations alike.

Culture

gamesmanship – the ability to succeed by using the rules of a game to your own advantage

posture – to stand or behave in a way that you hope will make other people notice and admire you; to pretend to have a particular opinion or attitude