“Death By Meetings” – Why Your Company’s Meetings Suck
Reading books is fun, but not all types of books are fun to read. However, we read the”not so much fun” stuff, because it is educative. This is where my reading of management text comes in. Most of the books in this area are not at all fun to read, but they are educative.
Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni is one of those rare management texts that are both fun and educative. I came across a copy in our managing director’s library,and I got curious. The hardcover comes in big print (yay for the short sighted), and it is only 253 pages short. However, what makes it a fun read is that it is a fable. A story about an imaginary gaming company that has turned lackluster, and a temp assistant who has an interesting personality disorder comes into the company, and using his film making background transforms how the company does meetings.
Why are meetings important?
Most All people hate meetings. We approach weekly/monthly meetings with dread, and we all want to get done with them, so we can go back to our desks and do some “real work”. What most executives do not consider is that how a company does its meetings has a real and serious impact on how the company performs, and the overall happiness of the team. Patrick’s final thoughts resonated with me…
…bad meetings exact a toll on the human beings who must endure them, and this goes far beyond mere monetary dissatisfaction. Bad meetings, and what they indicate and provoke in an organization, generate real human suffering in the form of anger, lethargy, and cynicism. And while this certainly has a profound impact on organizational life, it also impacts people’s self-esteem, their families and their outlook on life.
And so, for those of us who lead organizations and the employee who work within them, improving meetings is not just an opportunity to enhance the performance of our companies. It is also a way to positively impact the lives of our people. And that includes us.
Why is a 2 hour movie more interesting than a 1 hour meeting?
When you think about it, there’s absolutely no reason why a movie should be more interesting than your company meeting. First, a movie is passive, with you consuming stuff that was created by someone else, while in a company meeting, you are an active participant – you matter. You can interrupt a meeting and alter its direction, while in a movie, what you think doesn’t matter.
Secondly, a movie’s outcome has no effect on your life. I know self-help gurus will argue with me on this one, but very rarely does watching a movie necessitate your changing the course of your life. A company meeting on the other hand affects how much money you make, your level of job satisfaction and your relationship with your colleagues. Meetings touch on your overall happiness and satisfaction.
Lencioni posits that meetings suck more than movies for a number of reasons:
- They lack conflict and drama. Movies are engrossing because they’re based on a central conflict, and the potential of its resolution keeps us glued to the screen. Most meetings are boring, tedious, unengaging and even dry. There is no drama or conflict, in fact most participants often switch off.
- Meetings lack context. We tend to mix tactical, strategic and task-oriented discussions all in one weekly meeting, akin to watching a 2 hour film that is part news headlines, part sitcom and part movie.
- Meetings are ineffective. They do not contribute to the success of the organization and for that reason, many executives have no incentive to invest energy and hours in an activity that doesn’t yield a commensurate return.
We fix it by having more meetings!
Surprisingly, Patrick recommends that organizations should have more meetings, but with each meeting serving a different purpose as summarized below.
The book elaborates how to structure each of the meetings, and the potential traps to avoid for each of the meetings.
This was a fun quick read, but it also transformed the way I think about meetings in my work. I dislike meetings, and for that reason, I avoided having structured meetings with my team. The only formal meeting we have is a weekly meeting for the entire group. Nothing for my shop. Instead, we’d casually catch up over email, across the office (open plan offices suck :D) or even on Whatsapp.
This book has totally changed this. I intend to fully adopt Lencioni’s suggested meeting structure, and I believe it will change the way we work. I think it is a must read for anyone who would like to change how meetings happen at their workplace.
