Death by Meeting

By Joe Hungler on April 15th, 2008

Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business takes a new look at how organizations should look at meetings. Most of us dread meetings, but meetings are where many important decisions are made. If they are boring, it means we are talking about the wrong things or have the wrong people at the table. He uses a story of how meetings transformed a company, using a comparison to the television industry. They used the following meeting strategy:

Ø Daily Check In (5 minutes)-These should be done is small groups, for us, each Clubhouse. It covers the daily who, what, when and where issues such as who is using the van. Everyone stands so people keep it to 5 minutes.

Ø Weekly Tactical meetings (45-90 minutes)-These reviews metrics and has a quick go-round of what everyone’s week (limit to one minute per person). We’ve added a round of compliments to help break people out of their silos and build team camaraderie. They also include tactical questions, such as how are we going to address ongoing challenges or opportunities. When strategic questions arise, they are postponed for . . .

Ø Monthly (or Ad Hoc) Strategic (2-4 hours)-These meetings address issues critical to long term success. They focus on one or two topics. Execupundit has some ideas for the monthly meetings

Ø Quarterly Off-Site Review (1-2 days)-Look at trends, strategy, key personal and team building.

This may look like a lot, but when a lot is being accomplished in the meetings, it saves a lot of time and truly improves communication. Because everyone sees goals on a weekly basis, the whole organization is on the same page about what’s important. I will warn you that these meetings take preparation. You can’t do the weekly tactical unless your metrics are up to date. Staff time has to go into preparation for the Monthly and Quarterly meetings as well. Someone has to look at the industry/community trends, prepare necessary reports etc. It is key information that organizations need to be looking at. The book is well worth purchasing. It is a quick read, I finished it on a flight from Boston to Tennessee.