A tyranny of meetings

An item in the Guardian Weekly [03.05.13] speculated on how fine the world would be without meetings.  It claimed that the average office worker, presumably in the UK, spends more than 16 hours a week in meetings.  That is two “working” days.  The average civil servant allegedly spends 22 hours a week.  Many of these meetings are utterly pointless, says the writer.  Certainly, the process consumes many man and woman hours pointlessly. 

It was meetings which finally did me in with the church.   The church loves meetings, much as the USA loves firearms.   The church has assemblies, synods, boards, presbyteries, councils, committees, commissions, task forces, work groups, study meetings.   Year after year I attended and helped service these things.  Looking back now in wonder, it’s hard to see what it was all for.  I could have been doing something useful and/or pleasurable. 

These meetings were regularly scheduled, monthly, quarterly, annual – and at least in the Presbyterian Church we had sophisticated provision for special meetings should the need arise.  In hunc effectum meant that the meeting could discuss only the issue for which it had been called.   Pro re nata meant that it was called to discuss some matter which was urgent and unforeseen.    We all felt quite important on these occasions. 

Of course the Reformation, in trying to get rid of prince bishops and all manner of autocrats, needed then to set up committees.  The church became meeting-ridden.    With the bishop you had only the risk that he might be a bad bishop and exercise his power oppressively.  (Well, it was a real danger…)  With the presbytery, committee, synod, whatever, you now risked an entire morass of competing power agendas, often decided by the loudest or most persistent mediocrities.   I have seen a presbytery or assembly make a heroic and visionary decision, but it tends to be rare.   The decision usually is the end result of desultory discussion, and is some anaemic compromise which most can live with for a while.  

Passionate discussion is a real danger in committees and synods – it means that the outcome will be a matter of counting heads, and some people will get very hurt.  Truth is not discovered down that road. 

Now…!  Of course, getting people together to discuss something important is clearly a good thing to do.  They feel included, and it opens the possibility of a good decision.   We call it democracy.   So what I am referring to here is the oppressive culture of meetings, compulsory governance by meetings, the building of plush boardrooms with cocktail cabinets – and all the meeting-politics that constitute this culture.  Power gets used and abused.  People get defeated.  It can be a terrifying culture when your reputation and your future are at the mercy of a bunch of people who have their own agendas and opinions, and may by no means be filled with goodwill.  It is hard to see how such a context can achieve anything other than perpetuate itself. 

What would I put in their place?  No idea.  But it would be instructive to decree, say, a week or a month even without any meetings.  None, for any reason whatever.  See the result.  Was there chaos?  Or did people with responsibility simply make responsible decisions when necessary?   Who knows?  Nobody knows, because we haven’t done it.