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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. 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. One word of caution: Lencioni's characters are not Christ-followers and, at times, their language is coarse. Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software and Will Peterson, a temporary assistant, are the two main characters in the story.
Using lessons learned from the media industry, Lencioni provides simple yet effective answers to the problem of boring, unproductive meetings. And Yip Software is in danger of losing its competitive edge. 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. If your job requires you to attend or lead meetings regularly, I would strongly recommend this book
This was an excellent book on conducting meetings in a better fashion. 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. I would encourage all elders, deacons, and minister team players to read this and implement some of the ideas. Most ministers and workers in the church have dealt with poorly run meetings.
This book is easy to understand and easy to implement. There has to be a better way to run a meeting. This book is excellent in improving the meeting process in the church.
It would make church run better with less frustration by the members. The church needs this.
This was the best management book I have ever read. I have already used these techniques with the team I manage. What a difference. Anyone who manages a company or a team should read this book.
He also makes the assumption that boredom is a real enemy. Through his leading character, Lencioni proceeds through an analysis of why meetings are boring and ineffective. He makes the assumption that movies and television are inherently more entertaining (less boring) than what happens in actual human interaction. Learning takes place by observing and reflecting on these consequences and looking for ways to do better in the future. We can judge a meeting as effective if the participants produce commitments to action, possibilities, or learning. He assumes that if boredom is bad, entertainment is good. There is some value in differentiating among different types of meetings for different purposes and different levels of concern. 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.
He disagrees with the opinion that meetings are unnecessary and that they do not constitute "real work". In Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni presents a management fable about a boss who presides over "terrible" meetings. What happens in a meeting is people hold conversations to address these concerns. However, he does not explain how simply segregating the items addressed in different meetings will automatically lead to more effectiveness. People hold meetings in order to take care of concerns that they share.
His recommended solution to the problem of boredom is to make meetings more dramatic and full of conflict. 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 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. 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. Instead, he claims that they are crucial, and that the real work of management takes place largely within meetings.
These moods will dissipate naturally in a conversation where people are listening to one another and taking responsibility for their concerns. 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. A beginning facilitator learns that when a person speaks in a meeting, one of their aims is to attract attention to themselves. 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 fact, the closest he ever comes to defining effectiveness is that decisions get made. In the best of conversations, new possibilities will arise as people build on and enhance one another's ideas.
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. 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. 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. Conflict may arise and is not to be avoided, but may serve as the starting point for inquiry.
The quality of the decision can be assessed only in retrospect as the consequences unfold. 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. In developing his diagnosis, he relies heavily on the metaphor of comparing meetings to movies and television shows. 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.
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. 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. 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. This learning process is the ultimate connection between meetings and effective management.
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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