Read This Before Your Next Meeting

Before you sit through yet another interminable, boring, and useless meeting at work, grab a free (at least for now) copy of Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli. In keeping with this summer’s goal of concentrating on shorter e-books, this slides in at a mere 80 pages.

“Read This” is a manifesto encouraging a sort of grass roots movement to change our corporate culture in terms of when meetings are held and how they are run. You can get a quick veiw of the manifesto’s essence from The Modern Meeting Standard at the author’s web site. The seven points it addresses are:

1. The Modern Meeting supports a decision that has already been made.
2. The Modern Meeting starts on time, moves fast, and ends on schedule.
3. The Modern Meeting limits the number of attendees.
4. The Modern Meeting rejects the unprepared.
5. The Modern Meeting produces committed action plans.
6. The Modern Meeting refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory.
7. The Modern Meeting works only alongside a culture of brainstorming.

As I have not had the pleasure of seeing this technique in action, I cannot vouch for how well it does or does not work; but as someone who has sat through way too many useless meetings, I’d be all for giving it a shot.