Meetings 開會

Meetings are a part of our lives, especially where we work and they come in all shapes and sizes. The best meetings are those that are swift and action packed. I attended one of those recently. The moderator had a brief and dramatic talk by an outside speaker. (Blood and guts talks or films 恐怖片 like Red Asphalt that they have in U.S. traffic schools are also appreciated.) Then we got down to the business of dividing out the work and we were out of there. Congratulations and my heartfelt thanks非常感謝.

The worst are long and drawn out meetings. You know, you’ve been to them before. They are the ones where people are droning on and on just to hear themselves talk自己喜歡聽到自己講話. “Excuse me, but I have another good idea that will never be put into practice and no one is interested hearing, but let me take the next 45 minutes going it over in detail.” I’ll read the paper version later in a tea or coffee house thank you very much.

I suppose in this respect all cultures have them. Chinese and American firms both have them. The Hong Kong firm 香港公司 I worked for was pretty good about meetings. We only had meetings when serious work had to get done, such as the VP laying down the law of the land for us about something. I have heard Japanese firms 日本公司 are notorious for long and grueling meetings where internal power struggles 內部鬥爭 take place and lots of time is wasted, but I mercifully don’t have first hand experience with this.