Live Life With No Regrets!

We don't really seem to understand meetings very well. How many times have you attended a boring meeting doodling in your notebook or having an out-of-body experience?

Patrick Lencioni uses the analogy of meetings to TV, movies and shows. In mass entertainment, people are enraptured and stay still intently watching yet not getting bored or sleepy at all.

What is the difference? Drama, conflict, characterization, pacing.

The author says that there are 2 basic problems.

One, that you must have proper focus for each meeting. There must be an inciting incident at the beginning of the meeting to focus the participants. In story-telling, the inciting incidents sets the premise of the movie. E.g. We have the problem of Jaws in the beginning of the movie terrorising the residents. How do we stop Jaws? Or we see a murder being commited, the question then is who did it? Or even how?

Secondly, we must have different types of meetings. We don't mix 5 minute news with 1/2 sitcoms or talk-shows or movies or mini-series. Each of these formats have different purposes and used to tell things differently.

In a nutshell the recommendations for having meetings is to have 4 different types of meetings.

Meeting Type 1: Headline News Brief
Name: The Daily Check-In
Length: 5 minutes
Recurrence: Beginning of each day.
Posture: Standing
Focus: What you're doing for the day.
Caveats: If you have nothing to say, it's a 15 second meeting. Challenge actually is to keep it to 5 minutes only.

Meeting Type 2: The Game Show
Name: The Weekly Tactical
Length: 45 mins (must be regular length)
Recurrence: Regularly each week, same time and day.
Posture: Seated
Focus: Tactical issues, no preplanned agenda, accomplishing goals for the week.
Agenda: Start with 60 second report on what you're working on that week.
Score what the organization is doing according to 4-6 key metrics.
Only after that do you create an agenda.
Resist the urge to go on some interesting/important conversation that has no real-impact on your ability to accomplish your near-term goals. Note them down and keep it for the strategic meetings.

Meeting Type 3: Movies
Name: The Monthly Strategic
Number of Topics: 1-3
Agenda: Yes
Focus: Strategic, prepared debate and discussion
Length: 2-3 hours (irregular length, may even last 5-6 hours)

Meeting Type 4: Mini-Series
Name: Quarterly Off-Site Review
Focus: Review everything. Strategy, morale, performance, etc.