FREE DOWNLOAD Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable… about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life. In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch.
How could my life have unraveled so quickly? he wondered.
In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn't know how to solve. And he doesn't know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can't help him; they're as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey's world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable… about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business
It was a good book with great intentions. I think the allegory that the information was set upon was good and applicable. However, I found that it got in the way for me. I read for growth and information. I was looking for the information to come to light and had to wait until the end. Everything the book was about could have been summed up in 5 or 6 pages. English Pros for this title are easy to come up with: It was a quick read. The information is easily consumable. The resulting recommendation is fairly specific and easy to implement. The concept behind this strategy for your meetings seems solid.
Cons are that the information, while easy to test, does not seem to come from any sort of empirical source. Most of it sounds like Lencioni conjured it up from nothing. I'm OK with that, since that is how I have come up with some of my best work, but it is an easy criticism for a business book. The strategy sounds good, but will require some tweaking, I think to work in various situations, and I don't think it provides an end-to-end solution to business woes, or even challenges with making your meetings effective.
If I were to sum up the message of the book in a way that I could stand behind it 100%, it would be: If you want your meetings to be more effective, and ultimate contribute to the bottom line of your business, then introduce healthy conflict within a light weight structure. Let the attendees emotion be the driving energy behind good decisions and business success. English We’ve all been in meetings that seemed like a huge waste of time (maybe even led a few). Sadly meetings are not going away any time soon. In Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni helps isolate why our meetings tend to be so boring and unproductive and offers practical steps to get the most out our meetings. Pros: this book is a very easy read, does a respectable job of identifying the key issues, and provides practical solutions. Cons: this could have been an email (just kidding…but not really). The ideas could have been conveyed in about 2 pages of text, but the author chooses to explain his ideas through a 217-page story about a struggling fictional company. I suppose in some respects, I am more likely to retain the info conveyed through narrative than I am if you simply gave me a list…but it does drag it out a bit. Second con, this is just one guy’s ideas. While I suspect they may be helpful, he doesn’t really present any empirical evidence to prove that his ideas are effective in the real world. All in all, a quick, easy read that offers up some good food for thought on how to make the most of meetings. 3 Stars.
What follows are my notes on the book:
Meetings are not inherently boring. They are dynamic interactions discussing topics relevant to our livelihoods. We make them dull because we eliminate the one element that makes any human activity interesting: conflict. We can sit through a 2 hour movie without being bored because we get absorbed in the conflict. In any organization with thinking people, there will be differences of opinion on matters of strategy, organization, etc. Good leaders must mine the staff for conflicting opinions and grant permission to engage in honest debate. Once all the opinions are on the table, a decision can be made and then the staff must accept the final verdict and move forward as a team.
The author argues that more than one type of meeting is required to meet the needs of the organization.
Type #1 – The Daily Check In
This is a short (~5 min) huddle used to make sure team members avoid confusion on how priorities are translated into action on a daily basis.
Type #2 – Weekly Tactical
A regular meeting (30-45 min) focused exclusively on tactical issues of immediate concern. Each team member has 60 seconds to discuss what is on their plate so everybody has a sense of the issues that require attention. This is followed by a progress review. Contrary to conventional wisdom, weekly tactical does not have an agenda set in advance. The agenda is decided based off the issues raised and progress reviewed. The two goals of the weekly tactical are: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity.
Type #3 – Monthly Strategic
This meeting is for executives to wrestle with, analyze, debate, and decide upon critical issues that will affect the business in a fundamental way. He recommends budgeting 2 hours per critical topic to allow time for open-ended conversation and debate. They need to occur regularly so that they serve as a parking lot for critical strategic issues that may pop up in a weekly tactical meeting where there is insufficient time to discuss them.
Quarterly Off-Site Review
Off sites have a reputation as touchy feely boondoggles that provide little lasting benefit to the organization. Effective off sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, or even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so that a holistic, long term review can be conducted. This should include a comprehensive strategy review (is our strategy still good based off changes in industry or the market), a team review (identify any trends or tendencies that may be impacting the team), a personnel review (talk across departments about key employees to help identify superior and poor performers to better manage and retain talent), and a competitive and industry review (info on competitors or industry trends).
English No doubt the best book I have read on meetings. I was already familiar with the concepts from other Lencioni books (The Advantage, Five Dysfunctions and others) but this one goes in depth with all the key elements of an efficient meeting. I will definitely try to implement these principles and structure in my teams as much as I'm able to.
Two problems with meetings:
*Meetings are boring because they lack drama or conflict (rather than mining for conflict most managers are focused on avoiding tensions and finishing meetings on time).
*Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place. In the end little is decided because the participants have hard time figuring out whether they're supposed to be debating, voting, brainstorming, weighing in or just listening.
LACK OF DRAMA OR CONFLICT
Meetings VS movies:
*Meetings are interactive, movies are not.
*Meetings are directly relevant to our lives, movies are not.
THE HOOK. The key is to set up the plot form the outside (participants need to understand and appreciate what is at stake).
MINING FOR CONFLICT AND REAL-TIME PERMISSION. Leader can minimize the discomfort and maximize the likelihood that conflict will continue by interrupting the participants and reminding them that what they are doing is good.
LACK OF CONTEXTUAL STRUCTURE
Meeting stew - the tendency to throw every type of issue that needs to be discussed into the same meeting, like a bad stew with too many random ingredients.
THE FOUR MEETINGS
1) THE DAILY CHECK-IN requires that team members get together, standing up, for about five minutes every morning to report on their activities that day. Purpose is to help team members to avoid confusion about how priorities are translated into action on a regular basis. It provides as quick forum for ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks on a given day and that no one steps on anyone else's toes. Just as important, it helps eliminate the need for unnecessary and time consuming e-mail chains about schedule coordination. Challenge is to get team members to stick with it initially, long enough to make it part of their routine. Also keeping it to five minutes.
2) THE WEEKLY TACTICAL (45-90 minutes)
Critical elements:
The lightning round: Everyone indicates their 2-3 priorities for the week, it should take each member no more than one minute. Sets tone for the rest of the meeting. By giving all participants a real sense of the actual activities taking place in the organization, it makes it easy for the team to identify potential redundancies, gaps or other issues that require immediate attention.
Progress review: routine reporting of critical information or metrics (revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction, inventory etc. ) Point is to get into the habit of reviewing progress relating to key metrics for success, but not every metric available (4-6 max). Should take max 5 minutes, lengthy discussions should be avoided.
Real-time agenda: agenda should not be set before the meeting, but only after previous two rounds have taken place. Topics that need to be discussed should pop out. Mainly tactical issues that should be addressed to ensure that short-term objectives are not in jeopardy. Two overriding goals: resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity. Obstacles need to be identified and removed, and everyone needs to be on the same page.
Challenges that prevent proper implementation:
*temptation to set an agenda ahead of time, either formally or informally
*tendency for team members to go too much into details during the lightning round, causes others to lose interest, thus clouds the ability of the team to identify the right issues for discussion and resolution.
*temptation to get into discussion about long-term strategic issues. There isn't enough time for that. The tendency of leaders to inappropriately reconsider strategic decisions when faced with inevitable tactical obstacles. Limiting weekly tactical meetings to specific, short-term topics requires people to focus on solving problems, rather than backing off on long-term decisions that have already been made. Key to overcoming this is discipline, taking strategic topics off the table and taking them to the monthly strategic meeting.
3)THE MONTHLY STRATEGIC MEETING
The meeting where executives wrestle with, analyze, debate and decide upon critical issues (but only a few) that will affect the business in fundamental ways. Allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns. Advisable to schedule at least 2 hours per topic.
Sometimes ad-hoc strategic meetings are also needed(the most important meeting that occurs in an organization). It demonstrates that an executive team knows how to identify those rare strategic issues that deserve immediate attention even at the expense of the urgent but less important tactical concerns that surface every day.
Challenges:
*failure to schedule enough time for them
*putting too many items on the agenda
*most executives have too many tactical and administrative items on their schedules
*the failure to do research and preparation ahead of time
*the fear of conflict
4)THE QUARTERLY OFF-SITE REVIEW
Provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly and even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so they can review the business in a more holistic manner.
Possible topics:
*comprehensive strategy review.
*team review (assess themselves and their behaviors as a team).
*personnel review. Talking about the key employees within the organization, also poor performers.
*competitive and industry review.
Challenges:
*tendency to over-burden and over-structure the meetings (tightly scheduled slide presentations and lengthy information sermons).
*making those meetings too much of a boondoggle (exotic locations, travel, too many social activities etc).
*inviting outsiders to to attend the meeting in the spirit of inclusivity, it is a very bad idea because it changes the team dynamic significantly (only exception is using outside facilitator who is trusted by the team).
“When a group of intelligent people come together to talk about issues that matter, it is both natural and productive for disagreement to occur. Resolving those issues is what makes a meeting productive, engaging, even fun.”
“To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict. By doing so, they’ll keep people engaged, which leads to more passionate discussions, and ultimately, to better decisions.”
“Well, strategy. The competitive landscape. Morale. The dynamics of the executive team. Top performers. Bottom performers. Customer satisfaction. Pretty much everything that has a long-term impact on the success of the company. Stuff you just can’t cover in weekly or monthly meetings.”
English Death by Meeting was my first Lencioni book and I am definitely a fan. Having seen him first at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit when he was a last-minute fill-in for Howard Schultz of Starbucks, I was immediately impressed by his humor and insights. I wasn't surprised that he was invited back the following year and again this year for the 2013 lineup.
The book is an engaging tale on what spells the difference between meetings that are alive and dead. Do not expect a linear narrative; it is a fairy tale if you will, set in a modern-day conference room where managers at a make-believe company go through the motions of ineffective meetings that lead to nowhere in the name of productivity.
One could skip these parts and go straight to the points highlighted in the last section of the book, but you would totally miss out on the illustration the first part lends.
Our management team implemented the strategies we learned from Death By Meeting at the start of the year, and I must admit, in my experience, we are not only tighter as a team, we are more productive and efficient at getting things done.
I highly recommend teams read and discuss this book together to truly get the most out of it. English
I love when business books are written as a fable. The principles become real and so much easier to understand! While I don't agree with every idea in this book, overall it was a great read and a great way to refresh my meetings. Excited to try some of these things out with my teams! English Painfully outdated and 200 pages too long. Felt like being in a bad meeting about meetings. English I love your books. I love the writing style and how efficient the reading is. I would like to challenge Patrick with a review...
Page 230-231 When this happens, a leader can minimize the discomfort and maximize the likelihood that conflict with continue by interrupting the participants and reminding them that what they are doing is good. As simple, even p a t e r n a l, as this seems....
I'm sure we can find words that embrace all leaders that leaves gender out of the equation. English I didn't give this book a 5 star because I already follow a lot of these practices. It's not about the quantity of meetings (although they can be reduced sometimes) but mostly about the quality and value of them.
I know a lot of people and leaders who should read this story, it would make the work of a lot of people easier and better.
As always the story of the book is very good! English Would you prefer to attend a meeting or watch a movie? Depends on the movie, said no one ever. In reality, most of us would choose the latter. But why? Answering this seemingly inane question is the subject of this book.
As in the author's better-known The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, the exposition takes the form of a serviceably-written (but only just) novella that introduces the ideas, followed by a few chapters in essay form summarising the theory. This format solves two of the most annoying problems in nonfiction: 1) that some find the lack of narrative boring and 2) that interesting ideas are often interspersed with useless padding to spread a blogpost worth of interesting material over 300 pages.
The author's thesis is simple. The problem with meetings is not that we have too many of them. It's that they're boring and ineffective. They're boring when they lack engagement and conflict. And they're ineffective due to what he calls the meeting stew, a poor separation of concerns leading to mismatched expectations and a feeling of wasted time and opportunity.
Dealing with the lack of engagement
The author advocates setting the scene at the outset of the meeting, to address why the attendees should care. He suggests illustrat[ing] the dangers of making a bad decision, or highlight[ing] a competitive threat that is looming. But as this seems over-the-top, I think it's typically sufficient to explain why a particular topic matters. Employees aren't expecting Hamlet, but they're certainly looking for a reason to care.
Once the scene is set, the facilitator (and ideally all participants) should mine for conflict. This important as the collective ideological back and forth as a team considers an issue from its multiple facets, each contributing their opinions and challenging each other is the crux of a successful meeting. It makes the meeting interesting AND allows the participants to make good decisions.
Dealing with the meeting stew
Aligning expectations about the nature of the meeting is equally important. To enable this, the author proposes separating the various concerns that are typically tabled for discussion into four different types of meeting, each with a different format and frequency.
The Daily Check-in, is a 5-minute standup meeting, and should be familiar to anyone in the software industry.
The Weekly Tactical, starts with a lightning round, essentially a standup, and a review of key metrics, before agreeing a spontaneous agenda of topics that pertain to short-term tactical matters. The two key goals of this meeting are resolution of issues and reinforcement of clarity.
The Monthly Strategic, is a longer (2-3 hours) meeting with a predetermined agenda of one or two important topics that require pre-meeting research, debate, and decision-making. It's important to give this meeting enough time to have meaningful debate and commitment, so that issues are not reopened at a later stage due to a lack of buy-in.
Finally, the Quarterly Off-Site, is an even longer affair (the author suggests 2 days), where the team can take a step back to review strategy, assess its own performance, and look at the big picture.
Concluding thoughts
I found the model and the surrounding theory thought-provoking. And while all models are wrong, I will remember this one as useful. It provides a solid foundation that teams can adapt to suit their needs. The most insightful idea for me was the need for separating concerns to resolve the meeting stew. English
