Ask your average worker what the least favorite aspect of their job is, and meetings will likely make the list. Executives down to line employees often lament how much more they'd accomplish "if only I didn't have so many meetings," and the business section of most bookstores is filled with suggestions on how to minimize and optimize meetings.

What's interesting about meetings is that I believe most of us secretly enjoy them. Humans are generally social creatures, and the meeting is the ultimate social experience. In most cases, they're the equivalent of a corporate reality show, with different personalities vying for attention and recognition, complete with unmentioned alliances and no shortage of colorful characters. Meetings let us do everything from vent our frustrations, to attempt to demonstrate our superior knowledge in front of people we want to impress, to assuage a wounded ego by massing people around the world at our merest whim. Meetings also have the "benefit" of providing a break from the day's actual work, with the compelling feature that talking about work is usually far easier than doing it.

Next time you wonder why attempts to reduce meetings or make them more effective never seem to work, consider the notion that meetings just might be the preferred option to actually doing work in the majority of workplaces.

A friend recently shared that he'd just received his Swedish citizenship, after living and working in the country for several years. We had been interns together while in university, and our travails led both of us to experience the wider world in a breadth and depth I'd never imagined, his journey ending with citizenship in another country.

The United States has long been a recipient of travelers seeking everything from a better life to freedom from persecution, but interestingly as commerce and communications have globalized, this is becoming less of a one-way street and more of a bi-directional exchange. In the popular news, the press and political class have been slinging mud at a Facebook cofounder who recently renounced his U.S. citizenship.

In my travels, I've found borders and the pomp and circumstance surrounding ideas like citizenship and immigration a bit anachronistic. The people I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with around the world often are striving for the same things, and have adopted universal ideals like freedom and economic success that the U.S. once considered its exclusive domain. Countries like Dubai actively seek immigrants and offer compelling tax and residency programs, even going so far as to relax traditional cultural and religious traditions to attract foreigners.

I wonder if this new class of immigrants will continue to grow, each person seeking economic, cultural, or logistical advantages out of preference rather than necessity. If so, it seems countries like Singapore and Dubai that seek to attract new residents will have an advantage over those that seek to close borders and spurn potential residents and citizens.

The latest workplace gibberish I keep coming across is "statusing," as in "Joe is way too busy statusing to get any real work completed!" It makes the rather mundane aspect of reporting one's status sound all the more dramatic, and brings gravitas to what should be an ancillary activity.

Like most business activities gone wild, status reporting serves a legitimate purpose, and can be compellingly effective when done right. Reporting on a few key business metrics aligns diverse groups around similar goals, and well-executed status reports keep the right people informed while simultaneously allowing the actual work to get done.

When status reporting is elevated to its own unique and all-encompassing activity, however, there's usually something amiss. Like meetings, overdosing on "statusing" is usually easier than doing the real work, addressing difficult challenges, or making potentially unpopular decisions. Middle management can hide behind reams of flowery status reports rather than taking an unpopular (but correct) stand, while upper management can proceed with a fundamentally flawed plan as long as the status reporting looks favorable. Far superior to "statusing" is ensuring your staff are working toward a measurable objective with a well-defined business outcome. Everyone should know their next action, and status reporting should facilitate the process rather than dominate it.

The old bromide that "I'd rather be lucky than good" certainly has some truth to it, especially when considered with its frequent and equally hackneyed companion: "Chance favors the prepared."

While I've had my share of lucky successes, I like to think that preparation, diligence, and some innate intelligence on my part played into the positive outcome. I've been considering one of my best chance encounters recently, as my wife and I are about to embark on a trip to Montreal, where we first met.

I'll spare you all the details, but a variety of circumstances conspired to put my future wife and I, residents of Philadelphia and Orlando respectively at the time, at the same table in a bar in Montreal on New Year's Eve over a decade ago.

We're planning on returning to that same bar where we first met, with our first child at home with his grandparents, and our second child "in the oven," circumstances that would have likely been unimaginable to either of us on that cold evening as the calendar changed to a new year.