Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Advice for Meetings.



Not too many years ago, my immensely resourceful wife, Laura, cadged two ducats to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in New York at the old Ed Sullivan theatre. (As an aside, before that theatre's revival, there was a great Chinese restaurant of the very-oldest school just off the lobby of the old stage. Its decor, its waiters, its menu were almost exactly the same as they had been in the 1960s. I think they still had "chop suey" on the menu. Literally.)

BTW, cadged two ducats is Damon Runyon speak, aka New York old-style for "got two tickets." I still speak an old New York patter at times mostly because I know no one's listening, being way too concerned with their phones and way too self-absorbed to ask me to put the brakes on. I find it amusing, for instance, to tell someone I'll call them on the Ameche. Or I have to hoof it to an owl wagon. I don't care if people think I'm out of my mind. That might be the most-convincing evidence that I'm not.


In any event, when your ever-lovin' cadges a deuce of ducats to the neon-event, a lot of cooling your shoe leather is involved. That is, a lot of waiting until the "clipboard/lavalliere" people move you from one line to the next. The lines and the waiting of course are crowd-management, but the people who run the Late Show also use the various lines to prep the audience for what's to come.

They're not stupid either. A lot of the line litany is really semiotically flashing shots of a steak in front of a hungry dog. Salivation is salvation.

They've got you so whet with anticipation by the time you get into the theatre, you'd applaud a cockroach running for cover, or an old Henny Youngman joke. It's a bit like when your flight finally lands after four hours of circling O'Hare. Often there's a lot of applause. Not for any great accomplishment, but just because one phase is over so another bit can begin.

The main thing you learn waiting for the Late Show is the importance of the audience. As the various stage-managers and warm-up acts are quick to remind you, "Stephen feeds off your energy. The more energy you give him, the more show he'll give you."

In other words, energy begets energy.

I think Enrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize for proving that with some uranium 235 under a football field at the University of Chicago.

I go to a lot of client meetings where it seems like the clients' been told that any display of emotion or laughter or humanity is a violation of some Geneva Protocol for the Continuance and Propagation of Beige. As the old riposte goes, "You call this an audience? It looks more like an oil painting."


In our iterative age, an era of the utmost and most-pernicious collaboration, where every idea is litigated and few ideas are out-right bought, it does no one any good to sit on the other end of a zoom meeting like a dead fish. Or a comatose lox.

Even during the best of circumstances, tele-meetings are terrible. They're usually devoid of energy. You can't read body language. And two thirds of the participants are doing something other than paying attention hoping no one calls on them, kind of like they're in ninth-grade algebra and never factored their binomials.

Here are a few hints about how you might get more out of a phone call with creative people. Most of whom worked hard to do something that's different, funny, smart or provocative. 

So:

1. Make eye contact with the screen.
2. Smile.
3. When you like something, nod. Or say, 'that's good, I like that.'
4. Laugh when something is funny.
5. Don't say at the end, 'why don't we all go-around and comment?' That's like saying to a firing squad, 'Ready. Aim...'

Mostly, try to cadge yourself two ducats to the Late Show and feel the "value exchange" when a presenter feeds off the people she's presenting to. Feel the crackling energy that happens when people express a sense of caring through the simple act of being attentive.

Work is presented in meetings, that's their primary purpose. But good meeting attendees can get more out of meetings.

A good client/agency relationship means work can be improved in meetings. Made sharper, stronger, yes, even more attention-getting.

Your job isn't just to receive.

It's to give.

When you give more, you get more.



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