The company that I work for recently implemented an unofficial policy (maybe recommendation would be a better word) that there should not be any meetings scheduled for Friday afternoons.
In order to help facilitate this initiative, all of the conference rooms were artificially booked after 2:00pm on Fridays to make it a little more inconvenient for those that insist on meeting.
The reasoning behind this plan was to help prevent the late afternoon meetings on a Friday that tend to keep people in the office and away from their family. Rather than sit in meetings on a Friday afternoon, they would prefer to see employees wrapping up their tasks for the week in order to get out of the office at a reasonable time to work on the life side of work life balance.
I mention this policy because the other day I was attending a meeting and a few people were discussing this idea. They commented that while they thought it was a great idea, it does not accurately reflect the reality of doing business and Friday afternoon meetings could not be prevented.
When I heard this comment, I thought that it is not the reality of doing business that requires Friday afternoon meetings but instead it is our perception of reality. The true reality of doing business is what we make it – if we do not schedule meetings, the business will adapt and most likely continue to hum along without missing a beat.
Sure, there might be times where an emergency meeting is necessary. But as anyone that works in an office will likely confirm, the majority of meetings in the corporate world are a waste of time where very few decisions are actually made.
Have you ever experienced this at your place of work?
The perceptions that these people have about Friday afternoon meetings has become their reality. They don’t believe it is possible to do business without having meetings on Friday, therefore their reality is that they will still conduct meetings. Regardless of the fact that the company is encouraging people to avoid meetings – the true reality – the perception of reality is keeping people in the office.
Is your perception of reality keeping you unbalanced?