Read This Before Our Next Meeting (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
I found this to be a very compact work that does an excellent job of articulating a philosophy for team meetings. It is obviously written for the corporate context so certain values are heavily influence by the goals of productivity and pragmatic solutions, however, it is a very useful blueprint for how teams can maximize their work sessions together. There are strong arguments for what are acceptable and unacceptable grounds for team meetings. Included are several practical suggestions on preparation, goal setting and defining desirable objectives for those meetings. I think this book is written from a position of enormous privilege. The key thing he wants us to take away is that you should only have meetings when you have already made a decision and the meeting exists to give people a tiny chance to change your mind, but mostly to figure out how the group will implement your genius, already made decision.I am not a manager, but I am pretty sure that if I did that, I would get called a bitch. And if I "got buy in from individuals one on one" before my decision, it would seem like shady cabal building. I think this approach could only make sense if you were completely immune to people having feelings about lack of consensus.Also, I think his "Modern Meeting" sounds like a template for sitting down the voices of typically unheard people. If there is a hard agenda, lateness penalty, priority on conflict and not consensus, you are describing something that I have left jobs over, because there was no way for me to contribute or make a difference.To sum up: dude proposes "new" meeting model that would not be out of place in Mad Men, which coincidentally works best for dudes with pre-existing power. Fancy that.Read if: You are running low on people mansplaining why multiple voices are bad for productivity. I never run low on this. At least it was short? Skip if: You are interested in meetings that bring you new information or perspectives.Read instead: Watership Down, still possibly the best book on leadership I have ever read.
What do You think about Read This Before Our Next Meeting (2000)?
A must read for any leader of any organization that wishes to stay competitive in this modern era.
—Juzel
indicado para evitar perder el tiempo en reuniones
—Aryalan
