I like Galbraith but I think that something is happening that has value to the participants. The same way that church leaders gather for solemn "no business" meetings. The process is the outcome. There is no other. And for these sorts of gatherings the process is sufficient.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:05 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] No business meetings I've been reading John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Great Crash 1929". I've been going through the book rather quickly, but one passage slowed me right down. It concerns the "no business" meetings that were held in the wake of what happened in 1929. It took me way back and made me think about how many "no business" meetings I attended during my thirty or so years of working in government. Here's what Galbraith says about such meetings. ... Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action. The fact that no business is transacted at a no-business meeting is normally not a serious cause of embarrassment to those attending. Numerous formulas have been devised to prevent discomfort. Thus scholars, who are great devotees of the no-business meeting, rely heavily on the exchange-of ideas justification. To them the exchange of ideas is an absolute good. Any meeting at which ideas are exchanged is, therefore, useful. This justification is nearly ironclad. It is very hard to have a meeting of which it can be said that no ideas were exchanged. Salesmen and sales executives, who also are important practitioners of the no-business gathering, commonly have a different justification and one that has strong spiritual overtones. Out of the warmth of comradeship, the interplay of personality, the stimulation of alcohol, and the inspiration of oratory comes an impulsive rededication to the daily task. The meeting pays for itself in a fuller and better life and the sale of more goods in future weeks and months. The no-business meetings of the great business executives depend for their illusion of importance on something quite different. Not the exchange of ideas or the spiritual rewards of comradeship, but a solemn sense of assembled power gives significance to this assemblage. Even though nothing of importance is said or done, men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming important. Even the commonplace observation of the head of a large corporation is still the statement of the head of a large corporation. What it lacks in content it gains in power from the assets back of it. Ed
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