Meetings, more meetings!

Dr Rant has long been an admirer of Scott Adams and Dilbert. He learned most of what he needs to know about management from “Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook.” Adams protests that he tries to make his characters ever more absurd. His readers protest that management keeps on getting ever more absurd!

The UK NHS provides endless examples of mismanagement and may provide local and transatlantic visitors with some amusement.

In one Dilbert strip Dilbert is sitting with A.N. Other. Dilbert says, “There’s no purpose for this meeting other than my boss told me to have it…..so let’s just sit here silently until our time us up…..unless you have something better to do.”
Is there anyone who doesn’t recognise this scenario?

However real life is sometimes better than cartoons. And this gem comes from Helan Bevan in HSJ. In real life Helen is “director of service transformation” (Ed What the fuck is that about? Do Doctors turn into Pilots? Or Rabbits emerge from hats? Or buzzwords appear from strategic interstices) at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. (Ed. This organisation has never been known to darken a hospital or GP surgery in our living memory. Most doctors and nurses will never even have heard of this organisation. Dr Rant has no knowledge of any innovation or improvement that has come from its work. However it must be good as Quango Queen Dame Carol Black is on its board of directors. Apparently she's going to be its ambassador to medics, if there are any left after MTAS)

This piece carries self condemnation to new heights. Adams’ motto “Always postpone meetings with time wasting morons” is a good one. This quote shows why.

“The biggest problem was meetings. The leaders we studied typically spent 70 per cent of their working lives in meetings. Yet only 36 per cent of attendees made a significant contribution (ED so many?)to the meetings we observed. Only 27 per cent of meetings began on time and only 18 per cent finished on time. There was typically a lack of focus on actions, roles, responsibilities and deadlines and a lack of an effective protocol to ensure meetings added value.”

In short most meetings achieve absolutely nothing at all. Ronan Keeting sang “You say it best, when you say nothing at all.” In the NHS context this becomes the best management advice ever!

Now let’s just sit here in silence and contemplate the disaster the UK NHS has become. We’ll call it time for reflective learning, strategic thinking, direction setting and personal workload planning.