Meetings by Walking Around?

You know about management by walking around - and it works. You can't sit at your command post all day and truly expect to have a pulse on the organization. No matter how many informants you have working for you. You have to get up and mingle with the troops in their environments, job shadow them, have lunch in the cafeteria, ask for their opinions on things, let them know straight from your mouth how valuable they are to the organization... you get it.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis apparently feel the business world can cram even more hours and productivity into the day by holding meetings by walking around. Do Researchers have experience with business meetings? You know, they usually have concentration and note taking involved. I guess you could strap on a voice recorder.

Because somewhere around 40% of Americans are know to be couch potatoes, these measurement junkies feel that "meetings on the move" are the answer. Here is the advicegiven to hold a successful meeting in this mobile fashion, and my observations:

Appoint someone to run the meeting
I'm sure there was no pun intended here, right?

Keep the agenda short
You would need to so it could be memorized because you are going to have to be Houdini to walk, read the agenda, participate in the meeting and take notes.

Plan a simple route
What is Debra Haire-Joshu, Professor of Social Work, trying to imply here? Every Blackberry has GPS these days!

Tell people to wear comfortable shoes and head out the door
You really think if you let them out they are coming back? Let's not be so naive Debra.

Here's my thought on how to encourage and help employees be healthier. Do you remember gym period in school? It was in there among the academic class periods. What if employers adopted that type of workplace philosophy to help express how much they care about employees by providing them time to do some healthy activity apart from the time they are given to cram down the sandwich (oh wait, that's usually unpaid time)?

Healthy activity could range from putting on those walking shoes and heading out the door to a quiet dimly lit room where you could meditate.

Today's workplace wellness programs largely rely on providing information about things you can do on your own time. They range from the group gym discount, the EAP phone number you can call when you need someone to talk to during an off hours crisis, to the occasional health fair in the cafeteria where the health plan nurses come in to do blood pressure screenings, hand outmarketing tchotchkesandbrochures about smoking cessation.

It's not that all that isn't important or a nice touch the HR department provides but it's cosmetic and passive.

Wouldn't it be more productive if everyone left the agenda and the Blackberry at the command post and had an opportunity to practice healthy activity during those 2080+ hours they grease the corporate wheel?