Is Work Only Meetings? (Article)

Every day, newspapers show pictures of meetings. Pictures orchestrated in the ministry of information, taken in the first few minutes of the meeting, contrived to show leaders hard at work. When you call a minister, the usual response, in a somber, grave and responsible tone, is, “can’t talk right now; there is a meeting in progress”. And if the minister is a member of a high-powered body like the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) or any other high-level inter-ministerial set-up, the sound is even more grave and serious.

Indeed, the fate of the country is decided in those meetings. What happens in those meetings? Who participates? Why are meetings held? How seriously do our officials take those meetings? How well prepared are they? What is the quality of those discussions? How strictly and seriously the decisions made are implemented? We do not seem to have answers to these questions, but we believe that much governance improvement could happen if we can change our meeting culture!