Read This Before Our Next Meeting

Al Pittampalli’s Read This Before Our Next Meeting is a great, quick read on rethinking the productivity around meetings. I found myself highlighting a significant amount of the book in Kindle.  Here are just a few of my highlights:

Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli

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Last annotated on October 1, 2011

The experts remind us that if a memo suffices, we shouldn’t have the meeting. But to no avail. Without hesitation, day after day, each one of us schedules meetings like the one we’re about to attend today and, most certainly, tomorrow. A tragedy of the commons—everyone feels a benefit from calling a meeting, but few of us benefit from attending.Read more at location 54

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In our organization, though, and in modern organizations everywhere, meetings are the lever that allow coherent motion. Meetings are the way we make change, and change is how we grow.Read more at location 66

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We need meetings to ensure that intelligent decisions are made and to confirm that our teams are interacting effectively on complex projects.Read more at location 69

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We’re now addicted to meetings that insulate us from the work we ought to be doing.Read more at location 73

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By changing a single tactic, by isolating and destroying the mediocre meeting, we can revamp the way projects are organized, decisions are made, and work gets done. We can reinvent the meeting and get back to the essential work of creation and coordinationRead more at location 75

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We’d have more time in the day to spend innovating and initiating new projects, instead of drowning in old ones that never seem to die.Read more at location 84

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Most of all, in a world where mediocre meetings had disappeared, we’d be forced to make and defend difficult decisions. When these mediocre meetings go away, so does the ability to adopt the easy compromise.Read more at location 85

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1. Traditional meetings create a culture of compromise. 2. Traditional meetings kill our sense of urgency.Read more at location 93

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When’s the last time any one of us made a game-changing decision that made our hearts race?Read more at location 113

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Instead of a meeting structure that demands that we make and defend strong decisions, the broken meeting system we’ve adopted enables us to pass off responsibility too easily.Read more at location 115

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Traditional Meetings Kill Our Sense of Urgency Or as John Kotter says, our compulsive determination to move and win, now.Read more at location 140

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I used to come into work with a promise to myself, a commitment to do work that matters. But having been unsuccessful in fulfilling that promise in the short windows between meetings, I now come into work with the hope of surviving the day.Read more at location 143

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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.Read more at location 148

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Real work is what moves us forward. Work that involves action, struggle, and effort. It’s that output that puts us closer to winning. If the mission could speak, it would constantly tell us, “get back to work.”Read more at location 150

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The most talented among us know that they best serve the organization by making things. We add value only by producing work that contributes directly toward our goals and by initiating amazing work that wasn’t even asked of us. Instead, we’re pulled into meetings.Read more at location 152

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David Heinemer Hansson, from 37 Signals, says meetings are toxic because they break workdays into a series of work moments. 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.Read more at location 155

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Convenience meetings: Meetings called because it’s difficult to capture everything we want to say effectively in writing, quickly. These meetings rarely add any more value than a memo would have. In fact, they’re worse because in addition to wasting time, they rely on nonverbal communication that’s hard to refer to later on.Read more at location 166

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Formality meetings: Meetings called by managers who think it’s their job to hold them. It doesn’t matter whether these meetings are designed to give off the appearance of control and productivity, or whether they’re a way for managers to subtly exert their status; in either case, these meetings are wasteful. Even if having convening members get together to share advice or status reports results in some incremental benefit, it pales in comparison to the cost of the interruption.Read more at location 170

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Group work sessions: A group work session is exactly what it sounds like; it’s not a meeting. It’s real work done simultaneously with other team members, intra-team and often ad hoc. Example: Three of our writers get together and combine their talents to pump out copy that was more powerful than they could’ve written by themselves. The focus is creation, the purpose is clear, and the session includes only team members who interact with each other on a regular basis, anyway.Read more at location 211

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Brainstorms: Brainstorms are magical sessions specifically designed for generating lots of ideas. These are special. So special that we’ll revisit them a little bit later. But a brainstorm is not a meeting.Read more at location 216

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Traditional meetings are treated as just another form of communication. Just another item to be included in the same category as e-mail, memos, and phone calls. That’s an error in judgment.Read more at location 222

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Like war, meetings are a last resort.Read more at location 225

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Modern Meetings can’t exist without a decision to support. Not a question to discuss—a decision.Read more at location 269

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This principle will stop the over-planning and mass interruption that occur so often. With one click of a button, the decision maker disrupts seven people’s schedules for one hour, just to help make a decision. The Modern Meeting won’t allow it.Read more at location 271

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If you need my input pre-decision, you’ll have to get it from me personally. We’ll have a conversation. Less convenient for you, but that’s the point. You’re the one with the looming decision to make, not me.Read more at location 273

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The Modern Meeting has a bias for action.Read more at location 280

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The Modern Meeting focuses on the only two activities worth convening for: conflict and coordination.Read more at location 286

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We should be resolute, without being stubborn.Read more at location 289

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Conflicting opinions spur debate that can open the door to intelligent decisions. The Modern Meeting welcomes conflict. After a preliminary decision is made, if there are differing opinions or serious objections, the Modern Meeting gets them all out on the table to be considered.Read more at location 290

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In traditional meetings, individuals may hesitate to voice their true opinions or edgy ideas for fear of criticism. They may think: Is it the right time to dissent? The Modern Meeting meets only for the purpose of dissent. Conflict is expected, so participants feel safe to let their ideas fly indiscriminately.Read more at location 292

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One caveat: Upon making a decision, if you’re not willing to alter it or modify it in any way, don’t bother having a Modern Meeting. Just go.Read more at location 295

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Every member of any meeting should ask himself these questions: Will you be able to function if you read about the meeting after it’s over? If you are given the decision we’re discussing in advance, can you give me your opinion in advance? Do you add any value by sitting in the meeting without participating? Are you attending symbolically, or simply as a way to demonstrate your power? If you have no strong opinion, have no interest in the outcome, and are not instrumental for any coordination that needs to take place, we don’t need you. From now on, if you’re invited to a meeting where you don’t belong, please don’t attend.Read more at location 332

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The Modern Meeting rejects the unprepared. Traditional meetings were communication tools, often beginning with the dissemination of information. Preparation seemed at best redundant, at worst a waste of time. Not in the Modern Meeting. Preparation starts with the meeting leader. He must create an agenda and a set of background materials.Read more at location 340

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A useful agenda requires thought and hard choices—it’s not just a few bullet points.Read more at location 346

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Every meeting should require pre-meeting work. Any information for getting attendees up to speed should be given out beforehand. If the attendee doesn’t have time to read and prepare, she doesn’t have time to attend.Read more at location 354

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If someone comes unprepared, cancel the meeting or hold it without him. In exchange for your preparation, we promise you an intense, very short meeting where something actually gets done.Read more at location 362

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This is not high school; we strive to be a world-class organization. We can’t tolerate your unpreparedness anymore. Unprepared participants are dead weight.Read more at location 366

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