Introduction
I've seen this book discussed and mentioned on a number of different occasions. One was recently when I was listening to an industry leader talk about a "monthly strategic," which he had at Google.
This book isn't what it initially seems. I expected, like so many other readers, that it was about how modern businesses have too many meetings, meetings are awful, or that we should be scheduling fewer than we currently are. The author even calls out this expectation at the end of the book.
Instead, he makes the case that meetings are important, exciting, and perhaps we need more of them. As usual, Patrick uses his signature "fiction story" style with a short wrap-up at the end. I like this style and I find it an effective method of teaching. The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project are other famous examples that use this method to get information and ideas across.
In this book, the author argues for four key types of meetings which all have a specific purpose. He also argues for two main reasons that meetings are boring, stuffy, and ineffective in most companies today.
Reasons Meetings Suck
The two main reasons he explains are:
- Lack of Conflict
- Mixing Context
He explains that when meetings lack conflict, people are disengaged, bored, and uninterested. However, the same people love movies which are a similar length despite them not being interactive or being important to the viewer's life like meetings are. In theory, with meetings being interactive and meaningful to the employees' lives, meetings should be engaging and exciting... but somehow they aren't.
The author also argues that sometimes meetings suffer from varying contexts. For example, if people show up to discuss what needs to happen today and the meeting suddenly shifts to the yearly strategy, it will lead to disengagement, confusion, and wasted time.
Is there hope??
What We Can Do
On the first problem, we need more conflict. We need to leverage ideas around psychological safety and encourage people to speak up, disagree, and challenge each other. Those of you who know me already know I'm a big supporter of this and agree wholeheartedly with this point.
On the context front, the author recommends standardizing meeting types and their frequencies around specific types of discussion topics. Specifically, he maps four types of recommended meetings to common entertainment formats:
| Entertainment Format | Meeting Type | Similarities |
|---|---|---|
| Headline News | Daily Standup | Short, Quick, Immediately Relevant |
| Sitcom | Weekly Tactical | Short, and Relevant to Now |
| Movie | Monthly Strategic | Longer, Focused on Key Topics with In-Depth Discussion |
| Miniseries | Quarterly Offsite | Less frequent, Fully Zoomed-Out |
IMPORTANT
This one hits hard...
Throughout this effort, he also successfully makes the case that the idea of a manager or executive "looking at their watch so they can leave the meeting and get back to real work" is comical and ridiculous. Often the "real work" is simply email and messages from people who are confused because the decisions, consensus, and information from previous meetings weren't flowed down correctly in the past.
This idea hit me hard as I'm now at a place in my career where my value isn't from the actual work I produce, but from teams I build and processes / working practices I enforce. I think I'm guilty of this exact thing sometimes and really need to think on this.
Wrap-Up
I'm going to be changing roles soon, and I'm really thinking hard about what things I want to bring from my previous role and what I'd like to do differently. I think meeting structures and practices around them is an area where I can improve from past practices.
Patrick's books are generally very short and simplistic, but they always make me think and consider how I can be better. From that standpoint, I can always recommend them, and I plan to keep reading them as I get recommendations.