Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: The meeting place

I had no idea saving the planet was going to require so much admin. In the old days all you had to do was chain yourself to a tree, or lead a nonviolent revolution. But now you have to establish a not-for-profit association, write a charter, set up safe meeting practice, ensure you meet your terms of governance, and hope you can attract people with strong hearts and impressive skillsets who are willing to lose hours of their precious productivity time trying to engage in a collaborative process with people who may or may not be good at collaborating.

Collaboration and working together takes time. It takes a lot of meetings. Sometimes you have to have a meeting about the next meeting. When I am in a meeting I sometimes drift off and imagine Che Guevara in the Zoom age. I imagine Che’s iconic face in one of the squares with the ‘Che – he/him’ politely marking his attendance. I imagine the revolutionary Marxist moving to accept the minutes of the last meeting where he’d moved a motion for a Cuban revolution. Fortunately, it was a meeting with fellow revolutionaries so it wasn’t hard to find a second, even though Castro was an apology as he had another meeting.

When people ask me ‘How are you Mandy? What have you been up to?’, I stop. I’ve been busy. So busy that most days I have to start at, like, 5am to find a scrap of the day that doesn’t have a meeting in it. I basically have meetings all day. At home on Zoom. In the car on Zoom. At home around my kitchen table. Around someone else’s kitchen table. In parks. At community halls. At cafes. Actually, cafe meetings are my favourite. There is coffee, and food, and you don’t have to wash up.

You can see people having a meeting in a cafe. There’s basic meeting etiquette: if you see a friend in a cafe and they’re in an intense conversation with strangers, they’re in a meeting. Don’t sit with them. You’re not welcome. I’ve made that mistake and accidentally sat down in the middle of a meeting, only for my friend to politely tell me to F*off (actually, they said ‘Mandy, sorry, we’re in a meeting’). I felt embarrassed then got meeting FOMO. Why didn’t they ask me to their meeting?

I go to about 20 meetings a week. I had to ask people to stop bringing cake. It’s a weight gain issue that is never talked about. That tubby roll around your middle? That’s meeting fat. And meeting fat is hard to burn if you spend most of your day in meetings eating cake to show you can collaborate.

While meetings are essential for group projects, or to resource yourself with the connections that you need to achieve your project goals, meetings are also death to productivity. In a survey of 76 companies, productivity was 71 per cent higher when meetings were reduced by 40 per cent. I get it. I’m doing more things with less time and spending most of the week in meetings when I could be ‘getting things done’. I’d reduce the meetings, but I’d probably need a series of meetings to make it happen.

Meetings have become a core part of what I do. Now, when I hang out with my husband and kids – I set an agenda. It’s more efficient that way. 

I’ve developed a few techniques for making meetings better. If I have to meet with two people and they live local, we do a walking meeting. It’s hard to take minutes, but it means I get my 10,000 steps in and I’m in a cake-free-zone. My ideal meeting would be in a hot tub at Kiva Spa. In the silent spa. Just people using their higher selves to put forward ideas respecting the ‘No motions in the tub’ rule.

We live in a meeting-driven culture. A lot of what I do I can’t do without a meeting. So, my new rule is: a short meeting is a good meeting. Forget tantra, this is when we need a ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’.

To all of you out there changing the world in your meetings; thank you. I see you. Actually, I’ll probably be seeing you next week. Please don’t bring cake.