Book Review: Subject - Business Meeting Techniques

Title: Death by Meeting
Author: Patrick Lencioni
Publisher Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons Inc.
ISBN: 0-7879-6805-6

"Intelligence is no substitute for information; enthusiasm is no substitute for ability; willingness is no substitute for experience; and a meeting is no substitute for progress."

Meetings, b---y meetings, are the greatest time waster ever invented by man. This seems to be the sentiment shared by most of the participants in my "Time Mastery & Personal Effectiveness" workshops.

Death by Meeting, written by management consultant, professional speaker and author Patrick Lencioni really struck a chord with me. We all start off our week with 168 hours. No more, no less. However, how we choose to spend those hours can make a world of difference. Productivity is still the name of the game. Minimize the input to maximize the output. Most people in corporate life spend a great deal of their workday sitting in meetings.

"And yet most of us hate them. We complain about, try to avoid, and long for the end of meetings, even when we're running the darn things", contends Lencioni.

Lencioni and I disagree on the need to set a tight agenda complete with time lines but we do agree that "meetings are boring because they lack drama and meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure." To get the most out of meetings, Lencioni believes organizations need to adopt a 'more with less' philosophy. He believes there should be four basic meetings, each designed with a different end in mind.

Meeting #1: The Daily Check-in. The daily check-in requires that team members get together, standing up, for about five minutes every morning to report on their activities for that day. It's a great way to keep everyone in the loop with what's going on.

Meeting #2: The Weekly Tactical. This tactical meeting should last between forty-five and ninety minutes. There are two overriding goals: (1) resolution of issues, and (2) reinforcement of clarity.

Meeting #3: The Monthly Strategic. The length of a monthly strategic meeting will vary depending on the topic or topics. However, it's advisable to schedule at least two hours per topic. This will give everyone the confidence to table critical issues knowing they will be addressed, and more importantly, that a plan to resolve them will be discussed.

Meeting #4: The Quarterly Off-Site Review: Effective off-sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, even monthly issues that occupy their attention so they can review their business in a more holistic, long-term manner.

Sandy Alderson, executive vice-president of operations for MLB, had this to say about the book: "Meetings are such a critical element of effective organizational communication. Patrick Lencioni's book, Death by Meeting, is concise, entertaining, and an inventive guide to improving meeting structure, participation and results. Thumbs up for this insightful tale."

I couldn't agree more. If you're looking to put "meaning" back into your "meetings" then you should buy this book.