Relevance deprivation syndrome and PIMs

Client meetings versus internal law firm meetings ... Partners revolt against middle management ... Dorothy identifies tell tale signs of a pointless meeting ... Core Competency Going Forward ... Watch out for the compulsory dinner 

IN the morning, just after I have prised open my eyes, I reach for my blackberry.

First I look at the emails which have floated in overnight (messages from recruitment consultants and marketing opportunities from the business development team, which never seems to sleep).

And then I look at my calendar.

There are some client meetings. I quite enjoy going to client meetings and consider them to be my core skill and professional obligation.

They also keep the revenue coming in, which I have observed during my long career is quite important to keeping the business afloat.

But, my calendar is also heavily populated with invitations to Pointless Internal Meetings (PIMs). 

There has been a sharp rise in recent weeks of PIMs. 

It is a consequence of the latest management restructure.

Ivan our middle manager loves restructures. Dreaming them up is what he does for a living. 

Except that this time, there is talk that Ivan may have been - just a little bit - marginalised. 

The coterie of partners he manages has been seriously depleted. (Those partners under his wing who don't suffer from Stockholm syndrome have started to revolt and have secured a spot in another manager's stable.)

Ivan is thus suffering from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. This has caused him to call a lot of PIMs.

I see three-quarters of my day will be devoted solely to an Ivan-convened PIM, with about 20 attendees - all partners.

Assuming it goes for the full five hours assigned to it in the calendar, that is about $90,000 in otherwise chargeable time. 

Here's how you tell if you are being subjected to a PIM: 

• The agenda and meeting topic will be vague. To find out what the meeting is about you must attend and only then you will find the meeting is about one of three things:

1. Acts of Impossible Genius performed by the convenor to Further the Firm about which there will be a long speech and, very possibly, a power point presentation;
2. Gotta Do issues, by which I mean things Ivan tells us we have Gotta Do in order to Further the Firm (get better clients, be number one in the energy and resources sector, have a world leading banking practice, that sort of thing); or
3. Both of the above.

• While it is never absolutely clear what the PIM is about, you do get a general sense that genuflection in the direction of the convenor of the meeting might be a Core Competency Going Forward;

• Even though there is a general sense of pointlessness at the meeting, nobody has the gumption to leave. In fact, attendees will make some half-hearted contributions about things they Intend to Do, Quite Soon, which vaguely approximate the Gotta Do agenda.

• Invitees are told that attendance is compulsory. Ideally the convenor of the PIM will get someone higher up the management chain to telephone the possibly recalcitrant attendees (e.g. me) to exhort them to attend. I was actually told to cancel my client meeting today. I refused.

• The worst examples of the PIM finish with a compulsory dinner at an exorbitantly expensive restaurant with Ivan and other partners.   

With trepidation, I scroll down the calendar to the evening and groan. Oh God. There is indeed a dinner. 

Another evening trying not to get too drunk while valiantly attempting to keep the evening's sense of camaraderie limping along. This in the face of an endless line of boring stories from the socially challenged.

Don't get me wrong. I share a sort of in-the-trenches empathy with my partners, even the most socially challenged of them. However, a key motivator for marrying my spouse and bearing his children was that we enjoy spending our evenings together, even if the evening only involves spag bog and a bottle of red.

Actually, specially if the evening involves spag bog and a bottle of red. 

Hang it.

I'm not going. 

Dorothy