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

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Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place. Death By Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business was written by Patrick Lencioni–an American author and consultant, best known for his works in business and team management. As the story unfolds, the CEO learns powerful and simplistic ways to make the meeting experience so much better!

After all, we're not paid for doing anything exceedingly tangible or physical, like delivering babies or kicking field goals or doing stand-up comedy. The team chooses the agenda by identifying the tactical issues that need to be addressed to ensure the completion of short-term tasks and goals and clarify procedures, duties, or questions.

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. While being flexible, the leader must be firm, steer the company in the right direction by weighing the industry trends against company goals, face sticky situations instead of brushing them under the carpet, and encourage healthy debates and conflict. To add structure to your meetings, identify the topics to be discussed, the approximate duration, and the objective of the meeting (inform, approve, or update).

Everyone, but especially you, as the leader of the group, needs to be looking for places where people have different opinions but aren't necessarily putting them out there. Key to overcoming this is discipline, taking strategic topics off the table and taking them to the monthly strategic meeting. While these are both important problems to be aware of, by far the most common and dangerous challenge in making Weekly Tacticals work is the temptation to get into discussions about long-term strategic issues. Key takeaways: conflict is good (you might even say essential), preparation is key for larger conversations, and there is hope for lengthy meetings after all. They need to occur regularly so that they serve as a parking lot for critical strategic issues that may pop up in a weekly tactical meeting where there is insufficient time to discuss them.

And yet, meetings should be more interesting than movies because they have more inherent potential for passion and engagement than movies do. Pros: this book is a very easy read, does a respectable job of identifying the key issues, and provides practical solutions.

In summary, the story is good, but certainly should not be your first Lencioni book and the narration is adequate. And perhaps the Quarterly Strategic could map to an Agile ceremony, depending on what framework you might be using. It is imperative that the leader mines for conflict in these meetings and that the team engages in constructive debate as they work to arrive at the best solution. The Weekly Tactical meetings now focus on resolving immediate issues, while the Monthly Strategic meetings provide a platform for intense strategic discussions. The author, Patrick Lencioni, illustrates how to convert meetings into an effective, engaging, enjoyable process of communication through an entertaining and thought-provoking business fable about an organization failing because of the unproductive meeting the executives held each week.

He joins Hay House with his new book, Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die. He recommends budgeting 2 hours per critical topic to allow time for open-ended conversation and debate.