Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business |...

Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business | Patrick M. Lencioni | Not a fiction, but management advice

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Death by Meeting: ...

	Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business Patrick M. Lencioni Jossey-Bass, 2004 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 79 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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Good tips

This is one of the most practical books I've ever read. He does a great job of working you to the point and the thoughts behind his ideas. We've used this concepts a lot and it has greatly improved our meetings and communication.

Not a fiction, but management advice

This is Patrick Lencioni's new book published in 2004, again a fiction and management book. I think this one, for the story, is better written than his previous books. The description of the characters and the scenes in the story are more interesting and with more depth.

The story is about a company, having been acquired, facing its new boss. It sensed a death threat by the man from headquarters. The white knight who came to the rescue was a temporary administrative assistant to the CEO. Seems to be a proper EO job and I therefore call him the EO.

The lethal aspect of meeting has two meanings in the book.

First, meetings are the most important activities of an organization. All major decisions are made, strategies are formed, actions are planned during meetings. If the meetings are not effective, they will lead to the death of the organization. This was exactly what happened in the story, that staff meetings were boring and ineffective and did not came up with clear direction for everybody.

Second, the impending meeting to be attended by the man from headquarters would mean life and death for the CEO. He would be assessed on whether the meeting was really so bad as to affect the company, and if so, that would mean death for his career.

The story proceeded to saving the meeting, from the insight of the EO. He drew inspiration from his academic studies on film and television and compared meetings with headline news, television series and movies.

Drama - for meetings to be interesting, there needs to be drama and conflict. The EO suggested the use of the skills of script writers and directors, and compared the conducting of a meeting to making a good movie. The first 10 minutes should be used to set up the drama and suspense, and to focus the attention and interest of members. Then the chairman would mine for conflict and expose all different views. Meetings are better than movies as there is real-time interaction instead of passive reception of information. The chairman would encourage constructive ideological conflicts and arguments before coming up with a decision.

Contextual structure - The other fatal mistake of meetings is the lack of contextual structure, i.e. a meeting stew of everything that smothers the important issues. Drawing analogy to television and movies, the EO suggested that there should be different types of meetings dedicated to specific purposes:

1. Daily check-in for 5 minutes similar to daily headline news which people watch briefly for snapshots of information.
2. Weekly tactical meeting for 1 hour same as sitcom and crime drama that people watch weekly for short stories.
3. Monthly strategic meeting which lasts for 2 hours as a movie for detailed discussion of a particular strategy or a complete story from beginning to end.
4. Quarterly off-site review for two days like mini-series which draws people's attention for a longer period of time.

A remark in the book I like is the myth of too many meetings. Interesting and effective meetings will not waste time but instead save time. Lencioni points out that very often sneaker time is not accounted for as consumption of resources. They are the time spent by managers outside the meetings just to find out what others are doing, clarifying actions, clearing doubts. The matrix of a large number of managers consumes a huge amount of sneaker time. If the meetings make effective and clear decisions with all stakeholders present, a lot of sneaker time will be saved.

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Not as bad as it sounds

So my boss recommended I read "Death By Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni. I'll admit I wasn't too excited about the prospect of reading it. I thought it would be about as dry as the textbooks and case studies I read during a couple of required management classes in college. When I sat to read it, I was happy that it was a very quick read. There is a lot of white space in this book, and that's not really a bad thing. It makes you feel like you read a bit faster, and accomplish more with each page turn.

The book itself is mainly a story (a leadership fable) about a company that sells itself to another company and the top executive is then worried about his job. He becomes worried about his job when a VP from the parent company tells him their meetings are horrible, and if that's how they run their meetings, their company couldn't possibly run much better. The book then breaks into a rather interesting story about a young worker who comes up with several ideas to improve their staff meetings and meet goals.

I was pleased that my team was already executing a majority of the recommendations from this book, before reading it. (My boss hadn't read it yet either). While the topic sounds boring and dry, the author did a good job of keeping my interest and keeping it short. This took me probably less than 2 hours to read cover to cover.

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Highlights Good and Bad Meeting Practices

Patrick Lencioni highlights both good and bad meeting practices in "Death by Meeting." Meetings are a central component of the day-to-day operations at most modern businesses, and this book addresses the "practice" of meetings in a direct, head-on and meaningful fashion.

Some of my take-aways from this book were...meetings can be run poorly in many ways and the downstream effects of bad meetings are potentially significant and many.

Written in Lencioni's "fable and Model" style, I found the Model for good meetings to be, in large part, useful. Different teams/organizations will likely need to modify the Model as put forth in this book to be most effective, but I found the overall framework to be quite useful.

I recommend this book to anyone who spends some of their time in meetings...if nothing else, the book offers a refreshing and unique viewpoint of meetings in general.

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Pertinent and engaging

The Meeting - an inevitable annoyance or a worthwhile opportunity? Though I'm not the CEO of a corporation or even an office manager, I found this simple book to be a worthwhile. As a recent graduate in business management, I've been picking up books like this to keep myself sharp. There was information in this book that really resonated with me.

First, I have to say that "Death by Meeting" is an amazing title. Is there anyone who hasn't at least once felt the urge to drop during an incredibly long-winded ordeal of lip-service? We've all been there. The title sold me right off the bat.

The writing is in storybook format, so it is relatively easy to follow. It tells of company owner Casey McDaniel and the challenges that arise with running his startup software company. The story is ultimately about meetings and how the company's poor management thereof puts Casey's job in jeopardy. With some fairly realistic dialogue, some pretty fleshed-out characters must come up with solutions to increase meeting effectiveness.

While working in different capacities, I've experienced situations where meetings have worked and where they haven't. This book brought up several interesting techniques, while unveiling common stereotypes associated with meeting. Instead of focusing on common hot buttons like timeliness, agendas, and getting along, the author stresses the importance of meeting even more, encouraging conflict, and focusing on decision making. I sincerely enjoyed going through this and agree with much of Lencioni's rational. Due to the narrative, he probably could've made the book shorter than it actually is, but it makes for an engaging read while teaching relevant concepts.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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