Before there was project management software, desktop power bar lunches (and dinners) and all kinds of smoking cessation support group, there was a restaurant lunch on payday, cocktail napkins (at the ones to rest an occasional cocktail) and shared fun. – all in the middle of a reasonable working day.

The wonderful thing about these lunchtime meetings was that they were held in a location other than the workplace, and not always in the same location. Looking back, I realize that those lunches generally involved:

– Teamwork (at least two of us present)

– Decision making AND diversity (Italian, Chinese or hamburgers, not to mention dessert, anyone?)

– Finance (Ann had the extra cheese, so her bill is $ 1.00 more)

– Dependencies (I will have what she has)

– Leadership (the waiters instinctively knew the leader; he / she received the check)

– Reasonable risk (okay, I’ll have a glass of wine with lunch)

– Empowerment (I know what I want, I will order first while you make a decision)

– Commitment (let’s share an entry)

– Sympathy (we laugh, out loud, and enjoy ourselves and others)

– Measures of success (it was delicious, let’s do it again).

Sure, at least half of the lunchtime conversation focused on workplace gossip and life outside the workplace. Yet just as often, the topic focused on the one thing we all had in common: our work. Problems, now referred to as “challenges” or “opportunities,” were as common then as they are today, and sometimes dominated the time (yes, a whole hour and maybe even an additional 15 minutes!).

And where one of us invariably saw roadblocks, rockslides, and stop signs, another of us saw back roads, detours, less traveled roads, and new roads to build. Almost everyone had a free option or opinion on what to do to fix it.

Opinions and options were often good, and sometimes they were written so that they could be remembered, brought to the office, and implemented. Not everyone was carrying pen and paper (this was a pre-blackberry world, my friends, after all), so we grabbed the closest thing to hand: the nearly clean cocktail napkin and a BIC pen.

The cocktail napkin, that little 5 x 5 square that started lunch somewhere between a tablecloth and a hard spot (under the cocktail glass). Who knew it could become a vehicle to successfully complete a project!

With a few lovely words or phrases and an occasional picture scrawled on the napkin, lunch concluded happily and productively. If it was a really big initiative or a particularly complex problem, it turned into a two-napkin project plan.

The napkin full of ideas went from table to desk, from thought to action. No planning meetings, committees, or subcommittees, no credit disputes, and no dead trees. Oh yeah, and we went home from work at a reasonable time most of the time.

In today’s sterile work environment (in my opinion, anyway), there is little time for lunch and even less time for fun. It’s all about power and speed. The funny thing is, there is no energy in the energy bars, PowerPoint, or energy display days. And speed kills.

We are asked to embrace teamwork, but there is no team in the room at the time of the performance appraisal. We are told to think outside the box, but we are often rewarded for doing it “right” rather than for doing it differently. In the office, uproarious laughter is a rarity (and a “LOL” text is no substitute!)

After all the leadership training, many of us still feel more comfortable taking a direction than taking a direction. We avoid liability while claiming credit. And we make no move without a 50+ page PowerPoint presentation mostly useless ready. He speaks quietly and carries a large “deck.” Sigh …

Project planning has moved far away from the cocktail napkin and into intricate multimegabit software, slow and loaded with bells and whistles. Project managers are now certified and add “PMP” to their resume. All it takes is about 20 days of training and some homework assignments; there are no real projects with which to gain practical experience. To paraphrase Three Six Mafia’s Oscar-winning song, it’s tough for a PMP!

More time is now spent managing project software, monitoring tasks, and constantly updating the plan than on project work itself. There are pre-planning meetings, planning meetings, (small) post-action review meetings, operations review meetings, and alignment meetings to clarify our story. After which we present our “achievements”, someone else gets the credit. Meanwhile, we’re hungry and cranky because we haven’t had lunch or fun, and the prospect of leaving work “early” grows dimmer, along with the daylight.

It has never been truer, in today’s work-mad world, that home is where the heart is. Why? Because there is a precious little heart in the office or in the boardroom, and the rest of our anatomy spends most of its time at work. The heart stays home alone, along with those whose hearts we profess are most important.

Here’s an idea: Next time you have a planning meeting, bring some clean cocktail napkins and vintage BIC pens (no PDAs, no booze, no wireless laptops. You could even have the meeting in the corporate cafeteria or at a nearby restaurant. That way), you can also have lunch. Keep the time to about an hour, 90 minutes maximum. Spend the first 15 minutes talking about anything but work. Remember the sound of shared laughter. Then brainstorm relevant ideas (the reason for the meeting in the first place), scribble them on the cocktail napkins, pay the check, and head back to the office.

Even better, get a box of cocktail napkins … then you can really think outside the box!

What’s the worst that can happen? Do you leave work at a reasonable time feeling good about what you accomplished and that you accomplished something while working? Trees will love you for it too!

Can I offer someone a cocktail … napkin?