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For years, office workers have chortled over Scott Adams’ cartoon depictions of incompetent bosses, slacking co-workers, and evil HR directors. He’s now been joined in the Twitterverse by Meeting Boy, an anonymous worker who tweets funny observations regarding the useless meetings his boss requires him to attend.

Could Meeting Boy’s workplace experience be improved by the kind of training & intervention that facilitators like me provide? Maybe.

The best training is only useful if participants actually implement it. Meetings will only change if the people who have the power to change them actually WANT to change, and then take active steps to do so.

That doesn’t mean that only the boss can change things; Meeting Boy and his coworkers are NOT completely powerless. If one person in a group changes their behavior, consistently, others will eventually change in some way, however small. If coworkers get together and agree to make changes and then follow through, the meetings will change – and the boss will have to change as well.