John Linton
It seems as though the year is already speeding past with the end of February already 'in sight' which means that 8 months of the current financial year have already passed. Business remains very solid for Exetel in terms of order intakes and customer retention ratios and actuals for almost all of our ten products and services. I read the various international and national media on my 'research list' more thoroughly than usual this morning as I have been away for a week but I didn't see anything of any interest - in fact it was all very 'ho - hum. Perhaps it's just the time of year with the business world only recently returned from holidays and not many people 'into the swing of things' yet....perhaps Australian communications is just going through one of its boring phases? Alternatively the various communications providers are trying to second guess each other in trying to make their various offerings more appealing and haven't worked out how to do that yet.
I received a surprising number of requests for meetings this week which is unusual because I meet with very few people during a business week on average as I have very little to contribute to other people's businesses and very few people have very much to contribute to ours. I have no way of knowing whether this is a 'trend' in business to business relationships but it appears to me that there have always been a lot of unnecessary 'meetings' associated with business life and over the last few years I have wondered whether the true benefits of web sites and email have really 'sunk in' to the business processes of many companies we deal with. Perhaps so many meetings are needed to fill in the average business day for too many people? I have also noticed that many meetings seem to involve far more people than can possibly make a positive contribution to them and in many cases some people attend meetings without opening their mouths - except to yawn. I have a very low threshold of tolerance of meaningless talking with a result that, throughout my business life, I have always avoided meetings other than those with prospective or current customers which always have a clear objective recognised as useful by both parties.
Then again, perhaps I am the exception in relying too much on the 'written word' to obtain information in general or specifically and I would learn more if I had more face to face meetings with informed and erudite people - which is my particular problem because I don't seem to come in contact with too many of those in my working life. The few people I do meet with on a regular basis don't seem to find the same difficulties in filling their days with meetings so I am getting the feeling that I need to change my working habits to build more meetings into my working week - which brings me back to my prospective meeting list for this week which, if I agree to meet with the various companies that requested meetings, I won't have time to do carry out the various daily tasks that are 'locked in' to my working day....and as far as I can see are essential to be carried out.
Within Exetel we have a lot of 'meetings' between various people but our meetings tend to last a few minutes at a time with few meetings lasting more than 20 minutes and the average length being probably half of that. Most of our desk to desk communication is via email as it usually needs to copy various other people and is dealt with 'instantly' - for the most part. The casual walk up to someone's desk and 'meet' provides the rest of the inter personnel communications. We have very few meetings with our suppliers or advisers and in the case of our smaller suppliers we almost never meet with them. Perhaps this is an inevitable end result of our policy of trying to automate every aspect of our business dealings - perhaps we just, as a group of people, have got used to written communication as the sensible way of communicating?
Though I really do wonder whether any of the meetings I have been requested to attend this week will benefit Exetel in any way. Perhaps as I get ever older I am becoming too careful with the time that remains to me?
PS: it seems that more and more of the media is waking up to Krudd's lies and stupidities:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/how-rudd-the-dud-dropped-australia-in-the-alphabet-soup-20100221-ontz.html?rand=1266756351043
PPS: I emailed all the requestors for meetings this week and politely declined all of them.