I (and thousands of other commuters) have been mightily inconvenienced by the strike that has shut down Ottawa’s public transit system for nearly two months. The strike seems to be (finally) at an end, but it will be several weeks before all of the buses are back on the road.

These days, I find myself thinking often, as I make my begged, borrowed, or metered way to and from my office, about riding the bus. (Call me nostalgic.) Yesterday, for example, I recalled an ad I saw on the bus a few months ago. It really captured what many of us have come to think of as the transformative power of meetings.

The ad posed the question, “What happens between Before and After?” And it provided the answer: “Our meetings.”

The ad was for WeightWatchers, and it made a powerful point about meetings. The point was that meetings in themselves aren’t so important. Meetings are important because they connect the past we can’t change to the future we want to create. And it’s the future that matters.

So what’s the most important question you can ask at a meeting? How about, “What happens next?”

I keep hearing tales of otherwise well-run organizations canceling planning meetings and annual conferences because of what is clearly a very shaky economy. And I understand that this is an exceptionally scary time to be investing in something that may have only a limited short- or medium-term payback.

But if the alternative to investing in a well-designed mix of live and virtual meetings is to grope through the darkness toward an uncertain future, then I think the question becomes: Has there ever been a more important time to meet?

You can let the future bulldoze over you, or you can take an active role in deciding what happens next.