Let’s have a debate

A post on perfect.co.uk caught my eye today. Charlie Whitaker wrote: “Let’s have a debate about distributed power generation. No, let’s not. Let’s just start doing it.”

While free speech is under threat in this country, I’d like to board the band-wagon and request we ban the terms ‘have a debate’ and while we’re at it, ban all ‘meetings to discuss’.

Instead of ‘we need to have a proper debate about immigration/pensions/the health service, etc.’, it would be refreshing to hear politicians say ‘we need to make an informed decision’ or ‘we need to sell our solution to the electorate’ or ‘we need to convince people we’re listening’.

I have a feeling that debatophilia is the political corollary to the reactions of a meeting-tastic manager. You know the sort – every crisis spawns another meeting, there are meetings to schedule further meetings, and, I’ve even experienced meetings about staff spending too long in meetings…

Something I’d rather push is that there’s no value in meetings.

There’s value in making decisions, in communicating, in analysing and one way to carry out these activities is to sit down (or stand up) together with your colleagues – but it’s not the only way.

So, next time you catch yourself saying ‘let’s have a meeting to decide this’, try switching your words around: ‘we need to decide this, is a meeting called for or shall we do something else?’.

If only politicians would do the same…