Meeting

I am recently on leave to take care of my children. My housemaid is away and my mum is recovering from a surgery. Although housework is no more simple than my clinical duty, I have the pleasure of not attending many meetings.

Many of you may know I have a hereditary phobia of meeting. To be exact, I am not against meeting in its original sense - or its original purposes, which are:

• discussion
• decision
• dissemination of information

Unfortunately, many meetings are hold for very different reasons:

• declaration of power and ownership (by calling a meeting of a good many people, the chairperson shows to everyone that he or she is in power)
• illusion of responsibility (when the decision of a single person - usually the chairperson - is passed by a meeting, it becomes everyone's responsibility in case anything goes wrong)
• peer pressure (when the chairperson cannot convince a single key person on the decision, a easy way to get around the hurdle is calling a big meeting so that a whole lot of unrelated and poorly informed persons agree to the decision)

The sobering truth is, partly for that very last purpose, we are often called to attend meaningless meetings.