Meetings, Bloody Meetings

John Cleese is reading up for a work meeting the next morning. As his unsatisfied wife falls asleep, so does he, to dream he is in court being charged with running terrible meetings.

It's a quite lively industrial film that covers the common mistakes in running meetings that makes them such a useless trial for organizations, covering sloppy planning, poor communications, and worse organization of the meetings. It's very well done and very amusing for an industrial film. It's hardly surprising that it is, because it's written by Cleese and Anthony Jay, who would later go on to produce and write YES, MINISTER about the inability of ministers to control their subordinates.

There's a bit of sadness in this because it suggests that trials are well organized. I've served on three juries, and can attest to their being very wasteful of the jurors' time, what with badly offered evidence, cases being settled after the jury is picked, and the jury sitting around while lawyers wrangle in sidebars.

One of the best management videos around. I want to show it to a bunch of people!

After a day at the office, John Cleese dreams of being tried for his conduct of meetings. Cleese plays it like Basil Fawlty, of course. It's funny and instructive.

The focus is on the conduct of meetings, providing meaningful agendas, and being effective. If you spend much of your working life in meetings, you need to see this film.

While it came out in 1976, it is a true classic, and is not at all dated - unlike most management films.

I can't begin to calculate the time that would be saved if every working adult in the world, ESPECIALLY execs, watched this video and applied its simple tactics. In fact, I just submitted a suggestion to our company's suggestion box that we should all watch it.

When to arrive to meetings, when to start meetings, when to stop meetings, what to talk about in meetings--heck, even whether to have them or not--it's all covered here to very educational and mildly entertaining effect. Plus, come on, who doesn't need more John Cleese in their lives?

I wonder how hard it would be to dig up a copy ...