John Cleese is perhaps the most famous figure in British internal communication, though not many people would know it. He is, of course, most famous for iconic comedies such as Fawlty Towers and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But he has spent a much larger part of his career running (and starring in) the films of one of Britain’s most successful business-to-business media companies, Video Arts.
The story began in the early 1970s when, well ahead of the rise of the MBA and the expansion of the business schools, Cleese and Sir Anthony Jay gathered together a small group of distinguished TV professionals with the idea that they would produce educational videos addressing emerging issues and problems in the burgeoning world of white-collar work.
Through the 1980s Video Arts, the company he formed with Jay, expanded to become the biggest maker of training films outside of the United States. Our source of the month, Meetings, Bloody Meetings (1976, remade 1993 and 2012), provided Video Arts with their first major success as well as the template – humorous negative examples – that would become the company’s calling card and signature style.
In the film, a hapless manager named Tim (played by Cleese) falls asleep to find himself in a courtroom where he is accused of ‘cold-blooded time-wasting, and conspiracy to obstruct the course of good decision-making’.
During Tim’s bizarre dream we see how his comic inability to run a meeting impacts his small manufacturing company’s morale, performance, and the quality of both the professional and personal relationships of his employees. The need to effectively communicate internally is the difference between a successful or unsuccessful company. It’s worth saying that Tim is a victim of this himself; he does all his work at home (he explains to his wife) because ‘there isn’t time (at work). I have to go to all these meetings’.
Eventually, the judge offers Tim a conditional discharge if he is able to recite the lessons he has dutifully learned during the dream; ‘chairing without due thought and preparation; failing to signal your intentions to the meeting; negligent ordering of the agenda; not being in full control of your discussion; and failing to record decisions of the meeting’. Tim wakes up and sheepishly promises to ‘do a little thinking about that meeting this morning’.
The film plays on Cleese’s popular persona – what else is Fawlty Towers other than a comedy about how not to run a business? – while gently softening the edges. Tim is not the monstrous Basil Fawlty, he is a bumbling fool, and his mistakes and bad habits are easily amended. To drive the lessons of the film home, the video was accompanied by a booklet, ‘How to run a meeting’, written by Jay that young managers were encouraged to read and discuss.
Working with established filmmakers (like Charles Crichton), as well as an impressive range of comics such as Harry Enfield, Robert Webb and various members of the Horrible Histories cast, Video Arts went on to produce a stream of extremely successful films including More Bloody Meetings, Telephone Behaviour and The Unorganised Manager. The titles are instructive, revealing the extent to which, over the later years of the twentieth century, internal communication shifted from a broader commitment to employee welfare and engagement to a more instrumental tool for training and shaping managerial culture.
To this day, Meetings, Bloody Meetings remains the most popular film Video Arts has ever made (and has claim to being the most watched training film of all time). Indeed, it is so popular that Video Arts twice remade it (in 1993 and 2012). Interestingly, while retaining a sense of humour, the 1993 film (see link to trailer above) – alongside the presence of non-white characters and the absence of smoking – also addresses the issue of mismanagement in a more sombre and pessimistic fashion. ‘Meetings are management’, it explains, ‘they’re at the heart of any quality program, any quality organization, for that matter’.
In the early twenty-first century, the company launched a new digital platform that enables subscribers to both upload their own videos, as well as work through the company’s back catalogue. It also provides users with a range of analytical tools for monitoring engagement. Perhaps reflecting the changing nature of British businesses, recent Video Arts films appear to have become more psychologically inflected (Assert Yourself) and more concerned with interacting and impressing potential customers and clients (Successful Selling).
While the social and media contexts might have changed, the content remains remarkably stable. The 2012 version of Meetings, Bloody Meetings – made to celebrate Video Arts 40th anniversary – saw Will Smith, the English comedian and creator of acclaimed TV series Slow Horses, reprise the role of Tim, while Cleese took on the role of the Judge. Cleese also ‘introduced’ the film, presenting a prologue which underlined his authority as an experienced business communicator. ‘People have been making the same mistakes for thousands of years,’ as Video Arts puts it, ‘the basic principles of how to run a meeting have not changed in centuries’.