These days, partial closing of government offices is becoming customary. Posting notifications saying, “Meeting” and “No Service Due to General Meeting” has become easy. This is not to mention other causes of service interruption, such as power failures.
In some offices, the cleaning work continues up to nine o’clock in the morning and someone may be confused about where staff is waiting. The confusion over the serenity of the offices and the abandoned rooms will only be cleared when network or system failure is mentioned as a cause.
Traditionally, meetings played an important role in society for purposes of resolving conflicts or appointing leaders, such as in the Geda system. There are some nationalities in Ethiopia that use Mondays to discuss and resolve social problems.
In former times, when two nationalities got into conflict, the assigned police platoon leader would order the national flag to be raised in the centre of the fighting area. The warring parties would then stop the fight immediately. The message was that the government had come.
Then, the meeting was called and elders selected from the two sides would gather. Details of the damage would be assessed, captives would be exchanged, and compensation would be determined, often to be paid in kind, usually in heads of cattle. Getting court rulings for that kind of public unrest was very costly, if not impossible.
Meetings were reduced in frequency and importance after the 1974 revolution. In those early days of the revolution, one had to be careful not to offend the different party members in a meeting. The only way one could get a clue about ‘who is who’, was when a participant quoted repeatedly from Chairman Mao’s writings or if someone displayed a book like, “The History of the Albanian Communist Party”.
Then, young employees used different strategies to avoid those tedious meetings. The convenient way was to obtain sick leave ahead of the meeting. And in the worst case, one staged a collapse as if suffocated or stricken by disease.
In terms of using meetings in a focused way and obtaining agreement of purpose, EPRDF’s government is better. It is believed that the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) benefited from long evaluation meetings and conferences in its struggle to oust the military government.
Whatever the goal, that culture of incessant evaluation, may be seen as a strength of the EPRDF. But there are people in the bureaucracy who hate evaluation meetings and lack confidence to confront criticism.
Nevertheless, meetings are costly and left unchecked, they could end up in public dissatisfaction and frustration. The situation is worse in the lower levels of the administration as they are tied to the day-to-day life of the public.
Repeated meetings indicate poor planning and organisation, inadequate skills and procedures, and disintegrated activities. Otherwise, even emergencies have procedures.
Sometimes, yearly plans are established based on insufficient study. Data change frequently. In effect, the paperwork becomes the result.
Activities that require the participation of different sections, but that are simply planned by a concerned section, become a thorny issue for all. One or two employees summoned for other important jobs may also disrupt the performance of that particular section. Improperly planned targets also affect employee morale and infuse frustration.
These and other carelessly knitted activities call for a meeting. But often meetings do not bring solutions, and hence a vicious cycle is set in motion.
It is said saving is crucial for investment but there seems to be little understanding that delivering goods and services with less time and cost is equally important for development. New developments require new arrangements, procedures and systems. Doing things the usual way does not bring the unusual.
The importance of a meeting in achieving a unity of direction cannot be overestimated. But meetings are not an end by themselves. They provide raw information, not skills. That is why new entrants to the job market are often heard complaining that the orientation they received and the culture of the organisation, are totally different.
Therefore, organisations are required to plan and control meetings, convert the information they receive to workable procedures and integrate plans to solve the lingering problems. They also need to equip their employees with required skills and let cross-functional and inter-organisational activities be planned and coherently woven in order to reduce the meeting syndrome.
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