Ben Stein hits the Nail on the Head about Corporate Meetings

Image via Wikipedia

I saw the below article from a Patti Shock tweet this morning. As we have been talking about the perception of meetings on our podcast Ben hits the nail on the head about what really happens at corporate meetings. I had the pleasure of working with Ben Stein at a Java One conference in San Francisco several years ago. He was an interesting guy who was a pleasure to work with. I will have to dig up the picture I took with him at the event!

Don’t Blame the Business Trip
By BEN STEIN
Published: March 21, 2009

THE government is big and powerful. When it acts and speaks, the consequences can be immense and possibly not the intended ones — and not at all helpful.

Consider the issue of business travel. As everyone knows, the Treasury has been giving loans and bailouts to corporations in trouble, especially in the world of finance. There has been an outcry about some of these companies, which, after taking public money, held gatherings in what were seen as lush watering holes, places like Las Vegas or even spots in my beloved Southern California.

There was an especially well-chronicled meeting near me, at the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, of executives of the American International Group, the bailed-out insurance company. Some politicians have characterized this event and many others as examples of taxpayers paying for inexcusably luxurious business travel.

Like other taxpayers, I hate to see my dollars going to entertain employees of bailed-out companies lavishly. Just as a matter of public decency, it is possible that they should wear the hair shirt for a time — although it’s hard to see what business purpose is served by punishing the most productive employees at a company, who are often the ones at business gatherings.

The problem is that animosity toward ill-advised travel has led to fear in business: that government or media circles will frown on it for having meetings at all, especially if the locale is deemed luxurious. Business people say they are canceling meetings left and right to forestall criticism.

If this continues, it will be a puritanical excess that’s the problem, not a jet owner’s or a meeting planner’s.

The truth is that business meetings are usually not a waste of time, even if they are held in Las Vegas or at a resort with a golf course near a Southern California beach. They are not decadent, with rare exceptions. And at the business meetings I see, an incredibly heavy burden of work lies on the shoulders of those who attend.

Of course, I wouldn’t want to see taxpayer money going to buy Piper-Heidsieck for executives of bailed-out companies. Then again, I never see anything even slightly like that at business meetings.

At the gatherings I attend, men and women fly coach, stay in immense, boxy hotels, start their meeting days at breakfast at 7 a.m. and work through the day until far later than seems reasonable to me. Then they do it again the next day and the day after that, finally enduring the torture of waiting at the airport, next to screaming children, in order to get home.

These meetings, while burdensome, are helpful to the businesses involved. They cannot be entirely replaced with teleconferencing or mass e-mailing. The personal touch, the sharing of facts and secrets face to face, are important. Could Congress really do its work if it held its sessions by teleconferencing? Could Congressional committee hearings work as well by conference call? Could the Supreme Court?

Technology is wonderful and indispensable. But for finding out the tricks of the trade, the way business runs in bad times and good, the latest developments in business and the economy, nothing can replace the spark of intelligence that travels from person to person at meetings.

Moreover, it would be harsh in the extreme to kick the hospitality industry when it is down by frowning on business meetings, thereby making hotels lay off cooks and waiters and maids.

I understand the crusade against use of federal money for lavish parties and nauseating bonuses for executives of bailed-out companies — though I have been to a lot of parties at the White House, under previous administrations, and some of these events have been darned lavish, and financed by taxpayers. I do lament that this crackdown on corruption could spread to firing an immigrant (who was just looking for a better life) from her job as a carpet cleaner in a hotel.

MAYBE, with his customary precision of speech, President Obama could make it clear that he has nothing against business travel itself — but that he is only against a glaring abuse of government aid to bailed-out companies.

As my pal, Phil DeMuth, notes, who would be better off if business travel for meetings ground to a halt? No one and nothing. Business meetings are not the enemy. In terms of making the nation more productive and better off, they are builders, not saboteurs.