Another meeting ….
I remember sitting in a senior managers meeting getting all stressed out worrying about sales performance – the trend, annualised was worth a fortune to the company but I seemed to be the only one at the meeting getting all worked up!
Why was no one else getting as bothered as I was? They all seemed to be focused on some other issue that just didn’t seem as important to me. Let’s arrange a meeting to discuss this before our next meeting .. Oh my God!
This was Guinness, this was big business and it was management at the very highest level where the stakes were huge – what was I missing?
I had joined from a subsidiary company of Guinness in Cork called Deasy’s – we manufactured our own (quite profitable) soft drinks and distributed beer and soft drinks from the major manufacturers including Guinness. I had moved from the role of Financial Controller to General Manager, I had a lot of autonomy and now I found myself working in St.James Gate for Guinness as part of a large team.
My practical, work hard, do the (what I thought was) right thing, straight forward, no nonsense approach just didn’t seem to be cutting it at this level – in truth, I was struggling and getting very frustrated. I was starting to learn about the concept of meetings about meetings about meetings for the first time and it was driving me bonkers!!
The other thing I started to learn about was life in a large organisation and corporate “politics” and how these high stake personal power games were played out – as I said I was struggling with my very limited tool kit. At this stage in my career I needed to learn other skills to survive and thrive.
One of my big questions was how could these huge organisations succeed with such high stakes where potentially destructive personal politics could dominate and interfere with good constructive, positive work on an ongoing basis?
After three years of working with Guinness I figured out that “Success” happens in big organisations when “agendas” align.
A Senior Manager has a list of items that if he or she achieves them they will make them look good and advance their “personal” journey in the organisation. The Business has a list of items that are a priority and if these are achieved it will be successful. When the managers list and the business list align you get magic and progress is made – often this may not happen enough!
For a long time I thought that a corporate career was for me – I discovered I was wrong! Guinness was a great place to work, I made great friends in my time there, I learnt a huge amount but ultimately meetings about meetings was not for me ..
Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion
Fuzion are a Marketing and PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork
Tags: Fuzion, Greg Canty, Guinness
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 
November 13, 2012 at 12:23 am |
Very good article Greg. It’s very frustrating for the people involved when it feels completely pointless to be in a meeting, you’re not getting any progress and you’re only there because you always have a meeting at this time.
I remember one time a client called a meeting with one of my on-site colleagues and when they sat down she said,”So, what do you want to talk about?” It turned out there was no actual objective – just having a meeting because she thought she should.
Sometimes life’s too short!
November 14, 2012 at 7:12 pm |
great story Fergal – life is way too short
November 15, 2012 at 12:59 am
Exactly. Another manager with the same company took a different tack and whenever he went to see people he would always stay standing. I used to offer him a seat and he refused, saying that standing up was his way of making sure he didn’t stay too long. It seemed to work for him!
November 15, 2012 at 7:16 am
It was one way of doing it – in our case I think we would have been standing for hours !!
November 15, 2012 at 9:49 am
Maybe the sound of a body falling to the floor from exhaustion would have shaken them out of their reverie 😉
November 13, 2012 at 1:44 am |
brilliant piece regarding meetings about meetings, they happen in golf club every month.
November 14, 2012 at 7:12 pm |
time to join another golf club or quit the committee ….life is way too short !!
November 15, 2012 at 4:05 pm |
THATS WHY i NEED YOU TO HELP US,
Is it possible if I had a group of volunteers that we could maybe have a group session fee fior social media, facebook etc. so that maybe then I could let seperate committees look after each and build up their own network.
ie
Ladies advertising to ladies through social media of upcoming events, Results, Team participation, build up a archive online etc.
Men to men
Or does this make any sense.
If you know of anyone please let me know.
Thanks
November 19, 2012 at 11:54 am |
Alan – you can now segment your Facebook posts to only go to men/women etc. Probably no need for separate groups?
November 19, 2012 at 9:21 am |
Great article. I couldn’t agree more about aligning objectives. Unfortunately I think this needs to be practised from the top down and very often it’s not. Makes it harder for the rest of us to achieve business, personal and team goals while managing upwards.
November 19, 2012 at 11:53 am |
It must be one of the biggest challenges in large organisations – keeping business and personal goals aligned for the benefit of the business