nextHeadaches and stiff neck are common symptoms of meetingitis. The symptoms can
develop over several hours, or they may take 1 to 2 days. Other symptoms may
include nausea, vomiting, discomfort looking into bright lights, disorientation,
and sleepiness. Productivity declines. Fortunately, meetingitis is not spread by
casual contact or by breathing the air where a person with meetingitis has been.
Some duty stations, including New York City, experience large, periodic
epidemics, and travellers should check to see if meetingitis vaccine is
recommended for their destination.
But now, usually well informed colleagues are reporting the emergence of a
variant of the disease: pre-meetingitis. Pre-meetings occur in the course of
harmonization efforts, whereby staff have to meet among themselves to agree on a
common position, before they meet with their elders or staff of other agencies.
Pre-meetingitis has evidently caused suffering in DPP, PD, EMOPS, DFAM, OIA and
IT. Most likely, other divisions and country offices are also affected.
Are pre-meetings an indicator of alarmingly deteriorating office routines, or
are they necessary to seek radically simplified solutions to our business
practices? Should someone review and streamline decision flows, as we reviewed
office work flows three hundred years ago?[1]
Meanwhile, those who didn’t learn from past meetings will be doomed to repeat
them.
[1] prompted by Booze, Allen and Hamilton
(26 November 2004)
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