Humor at work: How to avoid ‘boredroom’ meetings?

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

MEETING NOTES: A seems to be speaking, mostly to himself. His slides are flapping valiantly behind him. His audience? Well, they are all ears.

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B seems to have discovered a new mobile game. He is darting yearning glances at his device, between a few strategic yes-es. C seems to be a writer in the making. A new story is flashing in front of her eyes.

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No wonder she is nodding, all attentive and wise. And D seems to mark time by the questions he asks. Current count of questions is 7. Here comes the next.

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But wait, is it really that imaginary? Or do the characters and their traits sound familiar? Is this a meeting we have been part of? Why, you might ask? Well, you might blame it on the gross abuse of strategic terms that we sprinkle around on PowerPoints that seem to have lost both their point and their power where we change versions of the presentations but where each new bullet takes us further away from the true narrative. Sample some of the fluff we hear everyday. When we are done looking for “out-of-the-box solutions” squinting at the sky for some “blue-sky thinking”, we “circle back” on possible solutions and focus on “low-hanging fruits”. Phew! By that time, someone in the audience might have just let out the first fateful yawn.What can we do to avoid such “boring” meetings? We suggest three simple ways: 1) Unleash the jargon-busting power of simplicity to start with. Instead of saying something like “I used a multi-tuned tool to process a starch resource”, simply say “I used