Management defined

There are times, although not many of them, when it's clear a meeting is required. Naturally, 99.9% of all meetings are lectures whereby the participants are told what has been decided by other, and then the decision is 'rubber stamped'. It happens this way purely because individuals will do anything at all to defuse responsibility to as many other people as possible. In many ways, the main role of professors here is to add to the numbers who take on responsibility for decisions.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Bad, often terrible decisions are still made, and countless hours are spent in rubber stamping simple decisions that would take any competent individual a few seconds to confirm.

Today was one such example. After 40 minutes of confirming pass/fail decisions on a whopping six candidates, with zero discussion except a rehash of what was on the notes in front of us, an extra item was added to the agenda: should we allow the school to increase the number of professors and how should it be paid for. An hour later, 20 people had sat and listened to just three who had any opinion at all. And then, of course, the original proposal, which most people were clearly against, was rubber stamped anyway and the poor foresight of the very top leaders has been justified by the rank and file who are unwilling and incapable of putting up any kind of opposition. 20 man hours were wasted agreeing with a proposal that wouldn't have been rejected anyway.

Why do we bother?