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Take a page out of Steve Jobs’ book and switch to walking meetings

Debate Information

Position: For
I like walking meetings and think it's more effective.  I also like to take meetings outside of traditional office desk settings as it puts people at ease.  
I will argue that we should make a point in business setting to take a good portion (atleast 20%) of all meetings as either walking meetings or atleast meetings outside of traditional desk settings.

https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/steve-jobs-walking-meetings?utm_swu=1054&utm_medium=email&utm_source=member&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter&utm_content=jobsmeeting&utm_term=DNL-03-24-18
aarongjoecavalrynatbarons
  1. Live Poll

    ?

    15 votes
    1. Walking meetings
      53.33%
    2. No walking meetings
      46.67%
It's kind of fun to do the impossible
- Walt Disney



Debra AI Prediction

Against
Predicted To Win
67%
Likely
33%
Unlikely

Details +


For:

39% (39 Points)


Against:

61% (60 Points)



Votes: 9


Debate Type: Traditional Debate



Voting Format: Casual Voting

Opponent: someone234

Rounds: 3

Time Per Round: 24 Hours Per Round


Voting Period: 24 Hours


Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Voting



Post Argument Now Debate Details +



    Arguments


  • Round 1 | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -   edited March 2018
    I assume that round one is acceptance and therefore I ask that my opponent posts 'no arguments to make it fair' in Round three otherwise I have one less round to argue.

    The Proposition always argues first.
  • Round 1 | Position: For
    ale5ale5 263 Pts   -   edited March 2018
    Walking meetings are more effective for the following reasons:

    1) good exercise
    2) friendly setting
    3) both parties are equal - vs boss against employee
    4) more comfortable without direct eye contact
    5) change of scenery 
    6) easier to walk and think

    thanks for accepting this debate. I agree not to post arguments in the final round
    It's kind of fun to do the impossible
    - Walt Disney
  • Round 2 | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -   edited March 2018
    Standing meetings? Obviously my case is not going to support sitting meetings, why not dancing meetings? That's healthier and better for equality as everyone can dance their own way even without legs...

    No, sorry dear reader that's not my case because sitting down is blatantly the way you waste the least energy on anything other than the meeting while not falling asleep as you may accidentally do while laying down.

    This is your resident advocate of the Devil here to overthrow the man who calls himself the righteous one.

    Since my opponent kept their debate extremely concise I will try to do the same. The reason I say 'try to' is because doing it as concise would simply be impossible since I am the Opposition in a 2-round debate. This means that since this debate is 2 rounds only, it would be very unfair and just plain bad conduct for me to rebut Prop(osition) in Round 3.

    Due to the debate being 2 rounds, I'm going to just do a 'destructive case against Prop's constructive' as my entire constructive by intertwining many constructive points into my rebuttals.

    If you have an issue with how I layout my debate, I suggest you hold a standing meeting about it and then get your priorities straight and once your legs get tired, bow before your master and listen.

    1

    Good Exercise? Yeah, so is going for a morning run.
    The 'good exercise' point is extremely amusing to me. Of all the ways one could exercise, walking has to be the single least energy-spent-per-minute mainstream one there is. Walking is what you tell a recovering patient from surgery or your grandparent to do for exercise. This is not ad hominem, this is called highlighting how hilarious the point is.

    I am aware that there are many different purposes and ulterior motives (or lack thereof) behind businesses existing but to put it bluntly, no matter how charitable a business is and no matter the reason why they exist, all businesses must make profit and maximise this profit in order to stay afloat against their competitors who mat exist for very different long-run reasons or may just be more efficient while existing for the same reasons.

    I would like to quote a source word for word that puts brilliantly what I'm trying to get at here:

    Note: While, in this debate, I strictly adhere to British English (the real English), this source dares to venture in to Americanised English and may cause my S&G Rating to lower (Debra picks up which of the two youa re using and marks you down for inconsistency, also Debra alters her score if a debate like this happens where Against is first and on top of that she is confused when you post votes and includes them in our scores so please feel free to ignore this AI overlord)
    "The world of work is made up of many different types of organizations. They employ millions of people to do different types of jobs. A business is a specific type of organization which exists to sell products (goods or services) to customers. Customers can be private individuals, like us, or other businesses. Why do businesses exist? Every business exists for a purpose. It may sell goods or services. Businesses must make a profit to exist. They need to know what they want to do and how they want to do it in order to attract and keep customers. Therefore, all businesses must have aims and objectives that identify what they wish to achieve."
    http://www.lordwilliams.oxon.sch.uk/
    There is a download link to the specific pdf if you Google 'Why do Businesses Exist and the link of this "lordwilliams" domain is the one that downloads the pdf. Feel free to AntiVirus scan it before you do anything further than the download.

    You are going to be significantly inhibiting the efficiency not only of your meetings but of your people if they are of ill-health other than these walking meetings. Even worse, during periods of lowered rate of meetings if your workforce is going to get less healthy as they are getting conditioned to do less outside of work for their health, their performance in-work will be hurt.

    "One way to be more productive on the job is to have improved mental health. Regular exercise can help curb feelings of anxiety and depression."
    "Being in your best physical health will help improve your overall work ability. Not only can exercising help reduce body weight and the risk for certain medical conditions, you also will have improved cardiovascular health, which will give you more stamina to meet the physical demands of your job."
    - https://www.livestrong.com/article/422836-how-does-exercise-improve-work-productivity/

    So, to begin with this dependency on frequent meetings to maintain good health is extremely unreliable for office worker's overall health due to periods of less meetings inevitably leading to their efficiency reducing.

    Walking meetings are in no way whatsoever efficient uses of time especially if your workers are very tired and downing a Monster™ energy drink or coffee just to get through the day (come on, we all have those weeks/days) and you are forcing them to waste the energy they would need to think properly and work well throughout the day and even the meeting itself (attentiveness) by making them stand. Instead of this, you should carry out regular health tests of many aspects including blood pressure and the whole shebang[https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-shebang.html].

    Following these regular health tests you should strongly talk to workers testing unhealthy and are already entitled to dismiss workers (meaning fire them) for being ill too often so why not also for being a high risk to your corporation? https://www.gov.uk/dismiss-staff/dismissals-due-to-illness
    Of course you can't just 'fire them' there and then for failing the health test. If they drop in productivity as well as begin to show strong signs of bad health interfering with their efficiency in the work place you have completely legal precedent to then cease to renew their contract or to discontinue your hiring of them. http://www.smbtrials.com/RC1ACS162/assets/files/News/February-March Employment Litigation and Counseling Newsletter.pdf


    2

    Some things are just not 'better' in any guaranteeable way whatsoever.

    Changing the scenery of the workplace from one scenery to another is in no way whatsoever a definitive change for the better. In other words, it can be a change for the sake of change whereby the scenery is equally good and bad to the old one or, even worse, the change can be detrimental.

    Since the change from sitting meetings or webcam meetings to face-to-face standing meetings has not been proven in any way whatsoever to be a change for the better, by the Proposition so far, the point is rendered moot[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/moot].

    This also applies to the eye contact point. Firstly, if the people are of similar height why wouldn't there be direct eye contact? Secondly, why would the eye contact be lost or gained by standing? Height variation is actually extremely mitigated by seated meetings, even if the chairs have no adjustable back you are at least negating leg-length's contribution to height. If eye contact is a significantly negative thing, webcam conferences would be the way to go, I'd presume.


    3

    Aside from the fact that a Boss, in a work meeting should not be equal to their employee, there comes the bigger issue of the nonsense of standing.

    As I mentioned in my second destruction-to-construction rebuttal, the differing heights make standing a much more awkward setting for those taller or shorter than the norm by any significant degree (obviously for opposite reasons). The 'equality' is maybe referring to there being no 'head of the table' seat. This is where I'm going to point out that if your body language and posittioning (either at front of the room or head of the table) are lacking, then the meeting will ensue into chaos. The meeting leader should never ever, not even by body language, show equality and most certainly not an ounce of inferiority to those they are leading.
    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245760
    https://www.scienceofpeople.com/body-language-alphas-nonverbal-secrets-leader/

    Like if you all were in Ancient Egypt and I was my original self we'd be all like:



    4

    Sorry darling, it's not easier to walk and think than to sit and think it takes more away from your brain and energy.

    What's that, you need proof? Hahahahaha, yeah have you ever heard of the burden of proof. It's your burden and you had better meet if if you wish to last against a majestic being like me, dearest Marcellus (inside reference to The Originals).


    agsrale5BaconToes
  • Round 2 | Position: For
    ale5ale5 263 Pts   -  
    @someone234,
    thank you for such an entertaining round :)
    I will take your points one by one.
    1) walking is still a healthier option than sitting.  I am not suggesting that it should become an exclusive source for exercise or a primary factor in doing walking meetings.  

    2) occasional change of scenery is good for creativity. It's not about every meeting, but a subset of meetings.

    3) friendly setting is a trigger for creativity so people aren't threatened.  Sure, for some meetings employee vs employer difference is important to be highlighted.  For those feel free to continue to use traditional office settings.

    4) eye contact
    the point here is that it's at times actually easier to have a conversation without staring at each other acriss the table or webcam.


    It's kind of fun to do the impossible
    - Walt Disney
  • Round 3 | Position: Against
    someone234someone234 647 Pts   -  
    Note: I am repeating myself here. Everything I raise here was already raised in my Round 2 (my first round of actual argument). If I do bring up a new point, it is purely to point out what Prop has failed to do, not to bring up anything constructive.


    1.0) Prop says: Walking is still a healthier option than sitting.  I am not suggesting that it should become an exclusive source for exercise or a primary factor in doing walking meetings.
    1.1) Walking is not healthier than sitting if you are low on energy, it will exhaust you too much and mean you have no energy left to pay attention to the meeting, let alone to come up with good contributions to the meeting.
    1.2) Walking in meetings will condition most people to do less exercise outside of work, knowing they are getting their minimum requirement regularly at work. This means during period of less meetings that workers will be overall unhealthier that will then decrease their efficiency at work.
    1.3) Similar to 1.1, I am pointing out that by making workers waste energy on meetings no matter how tired they are that particular day, you make them have less energy for the remainder of that working day (and maybe even carrying over that tiredness to the next if there's a standing meeting the next day) and it makes them have no physically easy time to recover physically so they can spend their remainder of tired energy on mental work.

    2.0) Prop says: An occasional change of scenery is good for creativity. It's not about every meeting, but a subset of meetings.
    2.1) A change of scenery is never to be assumed to be good if the current scenery is good. If anything it can be assumed to be equal or worse if the current one is good.
    2.2) Nowhere in this entire debate has Prop proven there is a link between standing during a meeting and change in scenery, it would only be a change when standing meetings are new.
    2.3) Occasional changes in scenery can be done in sitting meetings by renovating the workplace or moving the room but because changing scenery has yet to be proven to be a good thing, I didn't bring up this point before nor do I think it's relevant to the debate.
    2.4) Changing scenery is yet to be proven to be good for creativity by Prop. So far they have not proven any causality from one to the other.

    3.0) Prop says: A friendly setting is a trigger for creativity so people aren't threatened.  Sure, for some meetings employee vs employer difference is important to be highlighted.  For those feel free to continue to use traditional office settings.
    3.1) A friendly setting and a standing setting are yet to be proven to be linked, let alone similar.
    3.2) A friendly setting is yet to be proven to be a trigger for creativity.
    3.3) People should feel threatened by the meeting's leader/boss. This is how you ensure they don't interrupt others and they pay attention. Fear is important and body language as well as positioning is key. If anything, all standing enables is the shorter to feel inferior to the taller and this is most certainly not a 'friendly setting'.
    3.4) Prop concedes that there are times when it's totally inappropriate to all be standing huddled together in a setting that can easily make one forget it's a professional meeting. The fact that Prop says there are times to switch back to sitting meetings is a concession on their part to the superiority of such a setting whereas I am able to say never switch to standing meetings ever and concede nothing in return.

    4.0) Prop essentially says: Eye contact is more awkward in standing meetings due to height differences and this is a good thing because staring is annoying.
    4.1) I am not going to reply to such an outrageously nonsensical point. I fully explained in round 2 how to handle a meeting for more socially awkward individuals and also pointed out that eye contact can be a good thing especially when sitting helps negate height differences by a significant margin.

    I am done. This is over. I have won.

    Sit down employee and understand, I'm the boss of all this land.


  • Round 3 | Position: For
    ale5ale5 263 Pts   -  
    To be fair to my opponent I will not post further arguments in this round.  Let me round 2 speak for itself since I already made my point.  
    someone234
    It's kind of fun to do the impossible
    - Walt Disney
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