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First published by Do You Zoom, Inc., through The Domino Project
First published by Portfolio/Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2015
First published in Great Britain by Portfolio Penguin 2015
Copyright © Al Pittampalli, 2011
Cover images: (Post-it note) ZanyZeus/Shutterstock; (leather texture) colors/Shutterstock
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-97351-6
WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?
THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF MODERN MEETINGS
YOU MUST DECIDE
THE MODERN MEETING STANDARD
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MODERN MEETING
MORE QUESTIONS?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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‘I dutifully avoid meetings whenever possible, which is pretty much always. If I were to go to meetings, though, I’d want Al to run them. And if that wasn’t possible, I’d send this book to everyone else ahead of time and wait for them to cancel the meeting or run it exactly how this book describes’ Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Conformity
‘Compromise, status quo, deficient organization – like a physician’s bag overflowing with powerful medicines, Al Pittampalli’s new book delivers the prescription for an organization suffering from meeting malaise’ Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
‘If you find yourself withering away in endless meetings, if your organization suffers from consensus constipation, if you can’t seem to get a decision made this century, read this book’ Russell Bishop, senior editor at large, Huffington Post, and author of Workarounds That Work
‘Sucked dry, worn down, numbed out: pick your metaphor. Any way you cut it, bad meetings are killing you and your organization. This book will be your shield and sword to get your life back. Now we just need to sort out email’ Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Do More Great Work
When I first began writing Read This Before Our Next Meeting, I remember telling myself that if it earned 5,000 readers, it would be a huge success. To my jubilation, four years later, the book is out in over 100,000 copies all over the world (it’s been translated into five foreign languages). I’ve also had the privilege of helping some of the world’s brightest organizations—NASA, IBM, Abbott Labs, Hewlett Packard, American Electric Power, Hertz and more—implement the book’s principles.
One of the best things about having your ideas in the hands of so many is the feedback it produces. Countless executives, managers, and HR personnel have reached out to me to share inspiring success stories. And I do appreciate every one of them, but what’s far more valuable to me is the sincere criticism from thoughtful readers on how some of the ideas in the book fell short for them. I take these criticisms very seriously, and as a result, I’ve learned a great deal from them. That’s why I’m so thrilled to finally get the opportunity to update the book based on those insights.
As readers of the original version will soon see, the most notable change I’ve made is to convert the seven principles of the Modern Meeting Standard into eight principles. Because so many organizations suffer from meeting overload and decision paralysis, the Modern Meeting has always had an unapologetic bias toward action. But one of the concerns I’ve heard from some teams is that speed seemed to be such a priority in the Standard that they never felt they had permission to slow down and fully debate a decision. Clearly, the original principles didn’t have enough nuance.
As I make clear in this new edition, all decisions are not created equal. While over-discussion is an epidemic in organizations, some decisions warrant meetings that involve careful group analysis and debate. This new edition will show you which ones, and will teach you how to conduct these sessions without compromising the Modern Meeting’s spirit of decisiveness and forward progress. This spirit is embodied in the book’s new subtitle: How We Can Get More Done.
ModernMeetingStandard.com/updates