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How to Save the World (or at least yourself) from Bad Meetings

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How to Save the World (or at least yourself) from Bad Meetings

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David Grady's TED Talks

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David Grady: How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings

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"Over time, we've become nonchalant about bad meetings. If an operating room were as sloppily run as our meetings, patients would die. If a restaurant kitchen put as little planning into a meal as we put into our meetings, dinner would never be served."

- Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 3

You know you've been there. We all have.

Sitting in yet another time stealing meeting you're "required" to attend.
And of course, the meeting starts later than scheduled. And ends later than scheduled.
And while you may be physically present, your mind isn't.

As you sit there, "stuck" with perhaps the most unproductive sixty minutes you'll spend all day, you're trying to figure out how you're going to make up for this lost time.

But that isn't to say that meetings aren't important.

"In our organization, though, and in modern organizations everywhere, meetings are the lever that allow coherent motion," writes Al Pittampalli in Read This Before Our Next Meeting. "Meetings are the way we make change, and change is how we grow."

The problem is in the way we approach and run our meetings. And the solution, as Al explains, is ditching Traditional Meetings and follow The Modern Meeting Standard.

The Big Idea

The Big Idea: The biggest takeaway from the book

Ditch Traditional Meetings

"I wonder when we'll realize what a trap we've set for ourselves. Regularly interrupting the day to bring our best minds together to focus on the urgent makes it impossible for these people to spend their focused energy on what's actually important."
- Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 11

"Traditional meetings", as Al writes, tend to "create a culture of compromise" and "kill our sense of urgency" because more often than not, we have a habit of calling meetings that fall in one of three categories:

Convenience Meetings: "Meetings called because it's difficult to capture everything we want to say effectively in writing, quickly. These meetings rarely add any more value than a memo would have."

Formality Meetings: "Meetings called by managers who think it's their job to hold them. It doesn't matter whether these meetings are designed to give off the appearance of control and productivity, or whether they're a way for managers to subtly exert their status; in either case, these meetings are wasteful."

Social Meetings: "Meetings for the purpose of connection. We sometimes call social meetings without realizing it... Unfortunately, social meetings quickly turn circular and expand to fit the time. You might want to slow down and chat, but perhaps not everyone in the room has the same goals (or time) that you do."

These types of meetings, quite frankly, can be big time wasters.
And we can't afford to waste any more time (because time, of course, waits for no one).

So how can we be more effective with our meetings?
By following the Seven Principles of Modern Meetings...

Insight #1

An actionable way to implement the Big Idea into your life

Follow The Seven Principles of Modern Meetings

"Meetings need to be less like the endless commercial breaks during a football game, and more like pit stops at the Daytona 500."
- Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 14

Insight #2

An actionable way to implement the Big Idea into your life

Make A Decision

"In the Modern Meeting, the decision is King. All hail the King."
- Read This Before Our Next Meeting, page 33

Central to the Modern Meeting is a focus, and bias, towards decisive action. But before the Modern Meeting can take place, there are two important decisions you need to make:

1) Do I need to schedule a meeting?
We often hold meetings to make decisions because we're afraid of making, and owning, the decision ourselves. This isn't acceptable with the Modern Meeting.

Before you schedule a meeting, make a decision on the topic at hand. If you need input from others, speak to them on a one-on-one basis. Once you've made a decision, call a meeting to support that decision through conflict (to allow for a debate in conflicting opinions if you're open to altering your decision) and/or coordination (coordinate with the necessary people to carry out the decision).

2) Do I need to attend this meeting?
Each time you're invited to a meeting, ask yourself these four questions:

a) Will you be able to function if you read about the meeting after it's over?
b) If you are given the decision we're discussing in advance, can you give me your opinion in advance?
c) Do you add any value by sitting in the meeting without participating?
d) Are you attending symbolically or simply as a way to demonstrate your power?

"If you have no strong opinion, have no interest in the outcome, and are not instrumental for any coordination that needs to take place, we don't need you," writes Pittampalli. "From now on, if you're invited to a meeting where you don't belong, please don't attend."

Anybody working on a project that they care deeply about, and as Seth Godin says, want to ship, should follow The Modern Meeting Standard. Unnecessary and poorly organized, and run, meetings are a big roadblock to getting any real work done - and it's time we put a stop to it.

"We must demand a culture where bad meetings aren't tolerated," believes Pittampalli. "If you hold a meeting that wastes the time of your colleagues, you're blacklisted. We need a culture where people don't dare show up to a meeting late or, even worse, unprepared, for fear of being shunned. We deserve a culture where the strong spirit of teamwork brings out the best of the group, not the worst of the individual."

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Read This Before Our Next Meeting - Actionable Books

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"Over time, we've become nonchalant about bad meetings. If an operating room were as sloppily run as our meetings, patients would die. If a restaurant kitchen put as little planning into a meal as we put into our meetings, dinner would never be served."

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Cancel 50 percent of your meetings and you'll get more work done.

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There are many things that should be considered to make any corporate meeting to be successful. The first thing to be taken into account is the expenses involved. However, it is to be understood that different meetings involving different positions of employees, tend to vary in cost, like that of the senior management, team, manager and sales meeting. There are also other factors that make the meeting a complete success, like getting to the point quickly, engagement and involvement of all the members of the meeting, etc. The decks that are presented to the concerned members after the meeting need to be kept short and crisp, so that they are read thoroughly and understood. A short deck should have not more than 1 to 20 pages; Medium deck with 20 to 40 pages; and long deck with over 40 pages. The next thing that should be understood is when to do the follow-up. It would be effective only 13.5% after 5 minutes; 33% after the first hour; 62% on the first day; and 69% after the first two days. The average time spent reading every page of the deck 52 seconds for 1 to 40 pages; 35 seconds for 41 to 50 pages and 10 seconds for 100+ pages.

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There are many things that should be considered to make any corporate meeting to be successful. The first thing to be taken into account is the expenses involved. However, it is to be understood that different meetings involving different positions of employees, tend to vary in cost, like that of the senior management, team, manager and sales meeting.

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How To Improve Your Meetings | Visual.ly

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We all know how it feels in the end of the day after going to numerous meetings: empty and unproductive. There are simple ways to improve this and it