Managing Boredom In Large Meetings

For the Spring Meeting of the corporation; a hundred CEOs fly to a midwestern city noted for service by multiple discount airlines.
Here, we are informed of the unparalled excellence of the Home Office, and the many equally excellent reasons why the corporation's share prices have not budged for another year.

Despite the fact that all the executives who have stock options are unlikely to see any immediate or long-term advantage from this "perk", we are cheered to know that the drab-looking clique of senior managers is doing their best to operate effectively.

From dawn to dusk, we are harrangued by mediocre functionaries who believe themselves to be leaders in the industry. Under the watchful gaze of the Chairman, whose remote ancestors founded the company, and whose extended family owns the controlling shares, the suited ranks pretend to be impressed.

Lest we be distracted from this happy tale of ever-increasing success, cell phones and Blackberries are banned. I bear some responsibility for this measure. Last year, a group of my peers (younger junior execs who were "acquired" through the purchase of our small and more nimble firm four years ago, entertained ourselves by maintaining a comic commentarty on the most egregiously stultifying presentations on our Blackberries.

We were all deemed to have "bad attitudes" and to have insuficiently adopted the soul-destroying "philosophy" of our Chairman. So, through the course of the past year, I have been coached by various long-term employees of National Mediocrity Ltd. about the joy and personal success that always attends those who follow the NML pathway. But, at the conference, our blackberries are banned.

Because I was afraid that my fixed glassy-eyed stare was beginning to resemble the first minutes of rigor mortis, I began to invent games and diversions to preverve some semblance of interest. Whenever the words "industry leader", "excelllence," "bonus threshold," "Chairman's Award," "decision point," or "strategic enhancement" were spoken, I nodded vigorously.

Unfortunately, the buzzwords tended to be articulated in rapid succession by the same speakers, so I endured long periods of motionlessness, and then began nodding in a manner indistinguishable from a petit mal seizure.

When I tired of this, I composed a long list of "Ways the Spring Meeting Could Be Improved."
I had to steal the fancy hotel note pads from my neighbors in order to complete the list. Fortunately, most of my neighbors seemed to be thinking about suicide notes and did not object to my appropriation of all the pads.

On the remaining pages, I started jotting fond remembrances of great meetings by other companies with which I have been affiliated.
There were some great speakers, real conversation with peers, facilitated problem-solving that was actually helpful, and an opportunity for participants to do more than take notes.

Lastly, I began to inventory the contents of the tote bag filled with miscellaneous items I had received when I signed in at the Registration Desk.
One of the items was a truly elegant bound notebook, apparently included so that participants would have an appropriate place to record the pearls of wisdom delivered by the Chairman.

I used it make notes about future articles for the Blog.