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If your job requires you to attend or lead meetings regularly, I would strongly recommend this book Using lessons learned from the media industry, Lencioni provides simple yet effective answers to the problem of boring, unproductive meetings. Casey is bewildered until Will, a temporary assistant, begins to analyze the situation more closely. The solutions provided in this book are as innovative as they are fruitful. Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software and Will Peterson, a temporary assistant, are the two main characters in the story.
It will take some effort to sort through which of his ideas are transferable to your situation, but it will be time and energy well-spent. Like his other books, this book is written as a leadership fable; a story that illustrates the very points he wants to make (and for those who don't enjoy the story, the lessons are explained in a more didactic format at the end of the book). The weekly staff meeting has become unbearable and unproductive; a meeting that even Casey's key staff is seeking to avoid. Death By Meeting by Patrick LencioniReview by David Mundt Death By Meeting is Patrick Lencioni's fourth book and it focuses on what many consider to be a necessary evil in any business: meetings; boring meetings, to be specific. And Yip Software is in danger of losing its competitive edge.
One word of caution: Lencioni's characters are not Christ-followers and, at times, their language is coarse.
The church needs this. This book is easy to understand and easy to implement. This book is excellent in improving the meeting process in the church. It would make church run better with less frustration by the members. Most ministers and workers in the church have dealt with poorly run meetings.
I highly recommend this book. All of the suggestions would not work in a congregation framework, but the majority of the advice would translate over to the church. Sometimes these meetings can feel like a worst of time because nothing is accomplished besides fights and disargeement. This was an excellent book on conducting meetings in a better fashion. There has to be a better way to run a meeting.
I would encourage all elders, deacons, and minister team players to read this and implement some of the ideas.
I have already used these techniques with the team I manage. Anyone who manages a company or a team should read this book. This was the best management book I have ever read. What a difference.
A beginning facilitator learns that when a person speaks in a meeting, one of their aims is to attract attention to themselves. In fact, the closest he ever comes to defining effectiveness is that decisions get made. People hold meetings in order to take care of concerns that they share. To produce these outcomes in a conversation, the participants must not just speak, but also listen to one another and be willing to be influenced by the experience.
In fact, the scope and length of his meetings correspond almost exactly to those horizons suggested by the Last Planner ® System: the daily check in, the weekly work planning meeting, the 6-week look-ahead plan, and the pull planning meeting which looks 12-weeks out. He blames the ineffectiveness of meetings on mixing all topics, from the trivial to the significant and from the immediate to the long-term, in the same discussion. However, he does not explain how simply segregating the items addressed in different meetings will automatically lead to more effectiveness. He disagrees with the opinion that meetings are unnecessary and that they do not constitute "real work".
He also makes the assumption that boredom is a real enemy. The mysterious "research and preparation" mentioned by Lencioni may take the concrete form of going and seeing, grounding one's assessments and presenting evidence to support one's opinion.Decisions must still be made in meetings, and courses of action selected. These moods will dissipate naturally in a conversation where people are listening to one another and taking responsibility for their concerns. At best, the participants in the conversation will produce and assess a range of possibilities and commit to actions which will take care of their concerns. There is some value in differentiating among different types of meetings for different purposes and different levels of concern. Conflict may arise and is not to be avoided, but may serve as the starting point for inquiry. What happens in a meeting is people hold conversations to address these concerns.
He makes the assumption that movies and television are inherently more entertaining (less boring) than what happens in actual human interaction. This learning process is the ultimate connection between meetings and effective management. Through his leading character, Lencioni proceeds through an analysis of why meetings are boring and ineffective. In his world, it doesn't matter if anyone is listening, or if anyone changes their mind.To address the frustration of mixing agenda items of all levels of size and importance, he recommends substituting one weekly meeting of uniform length with several types of meetings of different lengths and frequencies: the daily check in, the weekly tactical, the monthly strategic, and the quarterly offsite. In the best of conversations, new possibilities will arise as people build on and enhance one another's ideas.
Moods of boredom and frustration arise when people feel that there is no possibility of being heard, no possibility of producing action, or no possibility of making a difference. Lencioni concurs with the conventional wisdom about what makes these meetings terrible, that they are long and boring, fail to engage people, and don't result in clear decisions about important issues. We can judge a meeting as effective if the participants produce commitments to action, possibilities, or learning. In developing his diagnosis, he relies heavily on the metaphor of comparing meetings to movies and television shows. He completely overlooks, and fails to consider the basic phenomena of concerns, conversation, listening, attention, assessments, and grounding.As a student of language and action as taught by Fernando Flores, I propose a different view of meetings. Learning takes place by observing and reflecting on these consequences and looking for ways to do better in the future. The quality of the decision can be assessed only in retrospect as the consequences unfold.
If people ask one another why they see things as they do, and try to understand the basis for an opposing perspective, they may learn something. Instead, he claims that they are crucial, and that the real work of management takes place largely within meetings.
His recommended solution to the problem of boredom is to make meetings more dramatic and full of conflict. In performing his facile and superficial analysis, Lencioni never gets all the way down to the basic questions of why people meet in the first place, what happens in meetings, what is the experience of boredom, and what constitutes effectiveness.
The facilitator, as the designated listener in the room, can make a person feel heard by reflecting what they say out loud and if necessary, writing it on a board. He maintains a kind of blind faith that if everyone in the meeting actually says what they want to say, there will be some kind of good result.
In Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni presents a management fable about a boss who presides over "terrible" meetings. He assumes that if boredom is bad, entertainment is good.
One of the dangers of a meeting is that people become so entranced by this attention that they fail to listen to either themselves or one another.
This is a good book to give you suggestions on how to conduct effective meetings. Very good ideas that will work for anyone.
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