Book Review: Death by meeting

DEATH by meeting

Meeting is to a leader as surgery is to a surgeon. Meetings are important but they can be lethargic, unfocused, and passionless. Some leaders often treat meetings as a weekly management ritual that should be done and must be done for the sake of doing it. Which is more exciting watching a movie or attending a meeting? Patrick Lencioni in his book – DEATH by Meeting, argues that a meeting is more exciting than a movie because unlike a movie a meeting can be interactive and is close right at home because the topic impacts our own lives while a movie is just for entertainment. But why are some meetings plagued with feeling of boredom, late attendance, absentee attendees, and look at as a “waste of time” by attendees? Patrick’s answer is found in the story of Casey McDaniel and Will Peterson in the company called Yip.

The Fable

Much of the lessons in proper handling of meetings are woven into the story. The story started with Casey McDaniel, CEO of Yip, and his boring weekly meetings with his executives. It was implied that the meetings that Yip’s executive is having is impacting the performance of the company. After unfortunate turn of events Casey hired Will to initially work as his assistant but ends up helping the executive change the culture of their meeting which inevitably affected their bottom-line. So why are meetings boring? Patrick’s answer – because it lacks drama andcontextual structures.

Lack of drama

He argues that the reason we can sit in a movie for two hours or more and feel uneasy after sitting on a meeting for an hour is because of conflict. We are so glued to the “conflict” we forgot the time. Avoiding conflicts causes frustration. I’ve seated in many meeting when all the people do is to agree with the leader. If this is the case, might as well have the leader send everything through email. Conflicts are important to keep the meeting flowing with ideas for resolution. So it should be presented in the beginning of the meeting, mined in the middle of every issues, and should be expected. So as a leader, it is our job to make sure that there is a healthy flow of conflict a resolution.

Lack of contextual structure

Usually the organization only has one type of meeting to address all types of issues and it is called weekly staff meeting. Patrick theorizes that we need to have a multiple types of meeting in fact he suggested four of them.

Four Types of Meetings

1. Daily Check-in. This is a five-minute meeting that should be done regularly (daily or every other day). Each member should report what he/she needs to do for the whole day. Any issues bigger than what is for the day will be talked about in the next meeting
2. Weekly Tactical. This type of meetings runs to 45-90 mins and has three parts.
1. Lightning Round – 60 seconds priority report of the week.
2. Progress Review – reviewing the previous action items
3. Real-time Agenda – The agenda SHOULD NOT be set prior to the meeting but within the meeting. This is a new concept and I will try to comment about this later.
3. Monthly Strategic. Runs from 2-4 hours. This is a monthly meeting where the team decides what type of project they would like to take for the month.
4. Quarterly Off-site. Runs from 1-2 days. This is where the company addresses what it will take on for the year and performance reviews are made.

Yupplication!!!

This is one of the few books that I’ve finished in less than 24-hours. You see I am a very slow reader it takes me more than a week to finish a book but this one took me less than a day and I believe it is because of the vehicle that Patrick used to relay a very simple concept.

What I really like about this book is that it stands on the idea that meetings have direct relationship to teams/company’s performance. In the story of Yip, Patrick pointed out that even though Yip achieved a considerable success, the company could have been in a much better standing it has a better leader. Dr. John Maxwell said it this way “everything rises and falls in leadership.” In Yip’s case the executive meetings became an impediment to the company’s higher morale and effectiveness.

Another thing that I like about this book is that even though it that talks about a boring topic (meeting) it’s surprisingly funny. I could not help but bolster out a frequent laughter every now and then. Also, the drama in the story is very interesting to keep me glued on my chair until I finished it.

So how can I apply the principles from this book to my life? Firstly, as a team leader I am not doing formal Daily Check-In meetings so I think I will add this in our routine as a team. Also I can enhance our weekly tactical meetings by following the three parts of the weekly meeting so we can have a more focused meeting. I also realized that as a leader it is my job to take charge not only the content of the meeting but also observing the morale of the people attending the meeting. It is my job to induce conflict to the meeting and to keep it interesting.

One thing I realized while reading this book was that I was asking myself a lot of questions. Like, how are my meetings doing? Am I sure that the attendees are not dying in my meetings? Am I truly addressing realistic problems in my meetings or am I avoiding conflicts? What are the things that I need to improve in my meetings?

I find these questions really helpful because it’s my way of evaluating how am I doing in these meetings.

Surprise Lesson

What surprised me the most is this - I can apply the four meetings in my personal quest for productivity not only as a team leader. I just finished my Monthly Strategic meeting with myself and have decided what type of strategy I can employ for the month. Also I am planning to set weekly meeting with myself discussing what I need to do for the week and review what I did last week. Then I can have daily meeting with myself to talk about what I need to accomplish in a day. Wait!! before you think I have some loose screws let me explain. For awhile now, I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy for lack of planning and review with what I want to accomplish and what I want to concentrate on. When I read this book I realized that I can take this process into my life so let’s see what happens.

Conclusion

Meetings are critical. Just as a general plans to go to war so as a leader should plan in a meeting before employing any action. So it is very critical but it can be frustrating and pointless. However, we can engineer our meeting such that it will be both productive and rewarding. This will result to higher morale, faster and better decision making and greater result.