HERE'S a pioneering idea that is apparently poised to sweep the world of commerce - dogs in business meetings.

No kidding. It's a proposal which was floated to mark National Meetings Week this week.

It's suggested that a dog can function as a "meetings facilitator", welcoming people with a wag of its tail, shaking paws with VIPs and barking when it hears a reference to your company's products or slogans.

If you found yourself at such a meeting, you could be forgiven for thinking that the dog wasn't the only one who was barking. But the more I dwell on the idea, the more it grows on me.

Surely a dog is the ideal creature to project the blind loyalty and boundless enthusiasm which some of today's multi-national corporations would like to see from their staff. And who else in any company would be so genuinely pleased to see the customers?

Okay, so you have to put up with your meetings facilitator drinking from the loo and leaving chew toys on the furniture, but no employee is perfect.

I'm not sure what National Meetings Week is all about, but if it means holding shorter and more effective meetings, I'm all in favour of it.

I don't have the kind of job which requires me to sit in a lot of meetings. But when I was reporting on local government, I spent a lot of time observing other people's meetings, which sometimes drove me to stabbing myself in the head with my pen for amusement.

In previous jobs, on the few occasions when I went to meetings, I tended to find they followed a routine, which went roughly as follows. Let's imagine you're at a meeting of five people.

Person One, who is chairing the meeting, talks a bit and introduces a subject.

As soon as Person One stops, Person Two chips in. This is someone who is really eager to impress the boss and has been fidgeting with eagerness to reveal his or her great ideas.

Then Person Three, who is keen to contribute even if he or she doesn't haven't anything new to say, spends five minutes enthusiastically making a point which has already been dealt with.

While Three is speaking, Person Four (quite often me) becomes increasingly concerned that they haven't said anything, and that they're going to leave without contributing. So Four blurts out something so bizarre and unrelated to the subject at hand that everybody just coughs and moves on as soon as possible.

Then comes Person Five, the complainer, who groans on at length about how none of the ideas discussed so far could possibly be done, and then proceeds to moan about the coffee machine or the lack of hand towels in the gents'.

If you've ever been at a meeting like this, you will be sorely tempted to think the business would be better off with Lassie as CEO and a board consisting of Pluto, Rin Tin Tin, Benji and Digby the Biggest Dog in the World.

First published: Oct 6