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

Product Information

Unfortunately, the reality is that one third of more than 11 million meetings held each day are considered unproductive! The most justifiable reason to loathe meetings is that they don’t contribute to the success of our organizations. The likelihood of six intelligent people coming to a sincere and complete agreement on a complex and important topic is very low.

One could skip these parts and go straight to the points highlighted in the last section of the book, but you would totally miss out on the illustration the first part lends. How pathetic is it that we have come to accept that the activity most central to the running of our organizations is inherently painful and unproductive?Daily Check-In: a quick five-minute meeting in which each person reports their activity for the day. Effective off sites provide executives an opportunity to regularly step away from the daily, weekly, or even monthly issues that occupy their attention, so that a holistic, long term review can be conducted.

In Death by Meeting, author Patrick Lencioni gives us a reason to hope that we can change the bad meeting culture.Real-Time Agenda Once the lightning round and progress review are complete (usually no more than fifteen minutes into the meeting), now it is time to talk about the agenda. His tables are generally engaging and his models provide concrete implementation to personal and professional life. Patrick Lencioni is a New York Times best-selling author, speaker, consultant and founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping organizations become healthy. The widespread appeal of Lencioni’s leadership models have yielded a diverse base of clients, including a mix of Fortune 500 companies, professional sports organizations, the military, non-profits, universities and churches. Lencioni believes that the meetings are not inherently boring, especially with all the dynamic interactions and vital decisions being made that impact the corporation and the team members' livelihood.

This was an interesting story illustrating the importance of business meetings and how to conduct them. If you are a team leader, help run meetings, or notice that you are daydreaming during your meeting, this book may be just what you need to make those meetings more effective, engaging, and maybe even tolerable. The truth is, the only thing more painful than confronting an uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn’t exist.making those meetings too much of a boondoggle (exotic locations, travel, too many social activities etc). Monthly Strategic meetings allow executives to dive into a given topic or two without the distractions of deadlines and tactical concerns. Patrick Lencioni is the president of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health. Progress Review: Next, the group should routinely review the reports on critical business information or metrics. If I were to sum up the message of the book in a way that I could stand behind it 100%, it would be: "If you want your meetings to be more effective, and ultimate contribute to the bottom line of your business, then introduce healthy conflict within a light weight structure.