The Fatboy show presenters James Onen aka Fatboy and Olive Najjuma have opined that having a clear strategy is eccentric to improved work results and also reduces work related meetings.
The two were commenting on Kin Kariisa, also the NEXT Media CEO’s advice to youth about strategizing and execution.
On Thursday last week, Kariisa in a tweet said that, “Many young people I often work with find meetings boring or admt their joy is in execution rather than strategising. If this is something you subscribe to, I reckon your most important task is changing your mindset - good strategies ease execution and reduce failure so Prepare.”
Fatboy reasoned that having a strategy and finding meetings boring are two different things which can both be true. He explained that having a strategy means creating an agenda with set goals which should reduce meetings.
“So if the strategy has been set and you decide that you want to have meetings every other day, then what is the point of the strategy? When you have a good strategy, it should minimize the number of meetings you need,” Fatboy said.
Olive in addition said that people generally hate meetings and if they are a daily at workplaces, they become redundant and ceremonial to workers.
“I remember when I was still in the banking sector we would have meetings every Monday. It was important because we would have action points to guide us through the week, and in the following week, we would be reviewing what was accomplished in the past week and set new goals for the new one,” Olive said.
“But then we got a new CEO who decided that we must have meetings everyday. So people would come to the meetings but half the time they would be minding their business which to me is a waste of time” She added.
Fatboy also noted that although Kariisa was far more accomplished and experienced in business than he (Fatboy) is, he needed to understand that more effort should be put into formulating good strategies than meetings because there could be a risk of diluting the initial strategy with new ideas.
However, Olive pondered that CEO’s are always attending meetings and they are understandable if held with different categories of workers every day but not the same people all the time.
“I would understand if on Monday he has meetings with his editors, then one with his producers the other day. “But if you're meeting the same people every single day, it means something is broken somewhere” Olive said.
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive and Sarah every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.