I just finished reading Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli. Amazon made this book available for free on Kindle a few weeks ago and it seemed like an interesting book. Anyone that ever has to go to meetings would agree that there has to be a better way to do meetings and this book proposes some solutions that I am going to try to incorporate into the meetings that I lead. Meetings are a necessary part of doing business…but they can always be more beneficial to those involved.
Here are some thoughts I highlighted while reading…
- A tragedy of the commons—everyone feels a benefit from calling a meeting, but few of us benefit from attending.
- Meetings are the lever that allow coherent motion.
- Traditional meetings create a culture of compromise.
- Traditional meetings kill our sense of urgency.
- Peter Drucker tells us that meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. We either meet or work. We can’t do both at the same time.
- Achieving flow, the state in which we do our best work, can take long periods of focus. Interruptions force us to start over each time.
- Meetings need to be less like the endless commercial breaks during a football game, and more like pit stops at the Daytona 500.
- The Modern Meeting convenes to support a decision that has already been made.
- The Modern Meeting moves fast and ends on schedule.
- Keep meetings as brief as possible and set a firm end time. Every minute that you are sitting with five or seven of our key people is a minute that’s costing us a fortune. Spend it wisely.
- The Modern Meeting limits the number of attendees.
- The Modern Meeting rejects the unprepared.
- The Modern Meeting produces committed action plans.
- The Modern Meeting refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory.
- The Modern Meeting works only alongside a culture of brainstorming.
- If no action plan is necessary, neither is a meeting.
- Have fun, and more important, go get something done. It matters.