BINDLCORP

01 · The Email That Got Scheduled

A piece of information needs to be communicated. It is two sentences long. It has no interactive component. It requires no discussion. And yet here you are, in a room, watching someone read it to you from a slide. The slide has the company logo on it. The company logo cost $40,000 to design.

Identifying feature: Could have been an email. Was not an email. Will end with “any questions?” There will be no questions.

02 · The Meeting To Schedule The Meeting

A real decision needs to be made. This meeting exists to determine who should be in the room when the decision is made, and when that room should convene. Occasionally there is a pre-meeting to prepare for this meeting. Occasionally the pre-meeting requires its own alignment call. In some organizations this process has been running continuously since 2019 with no underlying decision ever reached.

Identifying feature: Agenda item reads “discuss cadence.” Ends with a calendar invite.

03 · The Hostage Situation

One person needs to talk to one other person. Both are in this meeting. Twelve additional people are also in this meeting. Those twelve people have no role, no stake, and no ability to contribute. They are aware of this. The two relevant parties are also aware of this. Everyone is aware of this and no one will say it. The twelve people will sit politely for 45 minutes and then return to their desks having accomplished nothing except verifying that they were available.

Identifying feature: You were invited “for visibility.” You have seen nothing worth seeing.

04 · The Recurring That Outlived Its Purpose

This meeting was created in 2021 to address a specific problem. The problem was resolved in March 2022. The meeting was not cancelled. It has been running every Tuesday at 2pm for three years. No one can cancel it because no one remembers why it started or who owns it. Three of the original attendees have left the company. Their replacements attend without knowing what they are attending. The meeting now exists only to confirm its own existence.

Identifying feature: Nobody can explain what this meeting is for. It is on everyone’s calendar indefinitely.

05 · The Brainstorm With A Predetermined Answer

Leadership has already decided what will happen. This meeting exists to give the team a sense of participation in that decision. Ideas are welcomed with enthusiasm. All ideas are noted on a whiteboard or shared doc. Some ideas are described as “interesting.” None of the ideas are the answer that has already been chosen. The pre-chosen answer will be announced two weeks later as if it emerged organically from the process everyone just participated in.

Identifying feature: The agenda says “open ideation.” The outcome was decided before the invite went out.

06 · The Status Update That Exists Because Nobody Reads The Status Update

The team sends a weekly written update. It is thorough. It is complete. It is not read. So a meeting was created where people read their written updates out loud to the people who didn’t read the written updates. The people listening to the oral version of the written update are also not fully listening. Some of them are reading the written update for the first time while the speaker reads it aloud. This is described internally as “alignment.”

Identifying feature: Someone says “as I mentioned in the update” and is met with blank faces.

07 · The Celebration That Requires Attendance

Something good happened. A goal was hit, a launch succeeded, a quarter closed well. This is genuinely worth acknowledging. Instead it is acknowledged in a mandatory 60-minute video call during which leadership delivers remarks, a slide deck is presented summarizing what everyone already knows happened, and the word “proud” is used eleven times. The people being celebrated are visibly waiting for it to be over. The people presenting are also visibly waiting for it to be over. A trophy may be involved.

Identifying feature: Attendance is “strongly encouraged.” There is cake on the in-person version that you cannot eat because you are remote.

08 · The One That Ends With “Let’s Take This Offline”

The meeting began with an agenda. It was derailed within seven minutes by a tangent. The tangent produced a second tangent. The second tangent revealed a fundamental disagreement between two teams that will not be resolved today and perhaps ever. Someone says “let’s take this offline” — meaning a separate meeting, meaning this meeting produced a meeting. The original agenda items remain unaddressed. A follow-up invite goes out before anyone has left the room.

Identifying feature: “Let’s take this offline.” You are already offline. You are in an office.

The one-question audit

Before your next meeting — or before you schedule one — ask: what decision gets made, or what work gets done, that cannot happen without this? If the answer is nothing, you have your answer. You won’t cancel it. But at least you’ll know.