Read This Before Our Next Meeting: Book Review and Summary

Based on personal experience, meetings I held or chaired in the Corporate world or in personal volunteering efforts such as President of the Board for a Condominium, I get a kick out of having short and intensive meetings. Meetings that leave you empowered, refreshed and ready for more. This is why when this title was proposed as a read in Allstream, I jumped to it.

The book has its followers, being number 1 in kindle during its release, #4 as part of best business book of 2011 and selected by many companies such as IBM in 2012.
.

The book, doesn’t take a personal approach as much as a standard for the corporate to follow. It calls for complete ditch of traditional meetings as they create “a culture of compromise”.

.

Specifically, the meetings that are called for to be demolished are:

.

Convenience Meetings: Held usually to go over summary of what was proposed, to ensure everyone understands what was sent or documented. They add no real value and hence tagged as waste of time.

.

Formality Meetings: Held by managers to ensure their control, to exert their status or as a habit. Micro management hides under this in one way or another.

.

Social Meetings: as it implies, this type is to slow down, chat and to connect. Problem they may become more often than one needs and interrupt people’s time. There is nothing wrong to be social but this may be done through informal chatting, lunch time or other similar activities.

.

How can we improve, jump ship and get back to be on top of things? 

Welcome the 7 principles of Modern Meetings:

.
1) The Modern Meeting supports a decision that has already been made.

      This took me a while to swallow… the book suggests to work on your decision(s) prior to the meeting, hold separate meetings if you need to, until you come close or arrive at the proper decision. Decisions are personal initiatives here and shouldn’t be group one. This encourages self-productivity and responsibility. The book suggests to meet only for 2 reasons. "Conflict" and "Coordination".
      After thinking about this for a while, I could relate to a type of meetings we held at my organization where directors meet once on weekly basis to approve projects. Each manager prepares a summary, hash up the details, summaries, benefits and costs. The decision each project takes is less than 5 minutes. The proposal is either approved or manager is asked to revisit some areas of concerns. Very intensive and hugely effective.
.
2) The Modern Meeting moves fast and ends on schedule

      Needless to say, meetings that drag behind the hour, gets rescheduled several times are indications of somethings gone wrong. Either inability to chair the meeting, no proper agenda or lack of self-accountability to push further.
.
3) The Modern Meeting limits the number of attendees.

       Instead of calling twenty people to ensure you cover your basis, one may get away with a decision with only couple, hence freeing people's time while arriving at the same outcome.
.
4) The Modern Meeting rejects the unprepared.

      Little strong words used here, but the meeting doesn’t welcome you if you are unprepared. If your attendance is important the meeting would be rescheduled right away.
.
 5) The Modern Meeting produces committed action plans.

      No meeting should be held without proper action plan at the end. This gives the attendances a clear picture of what has been approved and proper summary/plan of what is next.
.
 6) The Modern Meeting refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory.

      Similar to the above 2 rules, you need to know what is going on before attending.
.
 7) The Modern Meeting works only alongside a culture of brainstorming.

      Ideas are encouraged with no perseverance. In fact, it is suggested to follow a minimum number of ideas to encourage participations.

.

So, are you thinking of holding or attending a modern meeting? Ask yourself these 2 simple questions and feel free to experiment with your decision:

•     Do I need to schedule a meeting?
•     Do I need to attend this meeting?

.

The above is a quick summary of the book. There is no particular item that I don’t agree with. In fact, they all make a great headway of transformation in any organization. However, the book sounds too harsh, authoritative at times, leaving one wondering if a company forced such rules in this manner suggested, how one's productivity improves on the account of one's moral, For instance, would one be “afraid” to hold a modern meeting for the fear of not satisfying one of these conditions? As an example of what I am trying to point out can be found toward the end of book in a "Q&A" section, the author answers a question on how to deal with divergence as they arise in the modern meeting, his answer: “Ruthlessly”.

.

At the end, the book can help any organizations to be more productive and much more efficient. However, I believe one can arrive at the exact same result with diplomacy and ease. When changing cultures one should keep in mind the many years employees have been raised to do certain things and should allow for time, although constantly, to change. 

#readthisbeforeournextmeeting
#corporate
#meetings