James Governor and Euan have both picked up on this post by Andrew McAfee generally challenging the protestant work ethic and busyness. Euan’s anecdote captures the potential blindness that an obsession with efficiency brings.
Everyone likes to bemoan the uselessness of most meetings. I wonder what it would be like if we really embraced the likely uselessness of a meeting right at the start. If we could then let go of agendas and the pursuit of action points. Just relax and see what happens, without expectation.
Often, our efforts to make meetings effective make them ineffective… usually because the call for efficiency is actually a demand for obedience. And obedience is a bit 20th century.