'You can send your avatar to a meeting... but it is still wasting your time'

GREAT ideas of our time, number 1,203 - a virtual alternative to attending a meeting. I'm a little hazy on the technology but, as I understood the breathless description of how this will work, we can be represented by something called an avatar using 3D computer graphics.

Great, bearing in mind that this wonderful development is irrelevant to me as I have realised an ambition in the past year never to attend another meeting of any kind at any time in any place.

Also bearing in mind that a cardboard cutout, never mind a 3D computer graphic, would be an improvement on some of the people - no names, no pack drill - with whom I have spent time at meetings.

Reading a little further confirmed as usual that life seldom lives up to the headline. You can send your avatar to the meeting, but you have to control its contributions and interactions from your computer.

The advantage, and I quote, is that: "Meetings occur in real time and participants can use the same props and gestures as they would if they were attending in person. The difference is that while one person may be addressing the meeting from Scotland, another could be at a computer in Japan."

Or next door. So it is still wasting time at a meeting, but without having to also waste time getting there. I wonder what Robert Townsend, one of the two men ever to write a management book worth reading - the other was Peter F Drucker - would have said about avatars?

As the ebullient and combative Townsend, one-time head of Avis car hire - "When you're number two you try harder" - died 10 years ago we can only guess. But a commemorative edition of his outstanding guide to business management, Up The Organisation, was published recently and, going against all precedent, I replaced my original often-read paperback .

I read the new edition in an hour and wondered afresh why his sound, humorously packaged ideas are still ignored by businesses. Such as fire the personnel (now, of course, human resources ) department, do not use professional public relations companies, and realise that "re-organisation" only creates an illusion of progress. Don't waste time with business lunches, take the trouble to use that little word "thanks" to staff, don't have reserved parking spaces for "top" people - "if you're so bloody important, be first in the building" - don't con anyone, particularly yourself, don't talk about synergy and say it will make two and two add up to five when we all know it makes two and two equal three.

And meetings? For meetings of any kind, in any organisation, Townsend said the fewer and shorter the better. My own corollary would be meetings with all participants standing and a two-minute time limit on any contribution.

As long, pointless meetings were again cited recently as a main cause of office rage and frustration, it is clear that Townsend's advice is still ignored by the self-important who love the sound of their own voice.

And now, God help us, they can use an avatar.