Death By Meeting

In my job I have to attend a lot of meetings. Planning meetings, creative brainstorm meetings, strategical meetings, production meetings, impromptu meetings, etc... In other words A LOT of meetings. Some meetings I sit there and wonder "why am I even here? This has nothing to do with me! This is a wast of my time!" And then one of my biggest pet-peeves is when meetings don't start on time, or even worse, when they don't end on time. If I had a quarter for every meeting that dragged on and on I would be a rich man. Meetings that run over by 30 minutes or even an hour just aggravated me - ESPECIALLY if it's a "why am I here?" meeting. Haha, well you get my point...meetings aren't my favorite.

To be honest with you, I do actually enjoy meetings if they are the right type. I believe that it is possible to walk away from a meeting and feel confident, energized, and empowered to do your job better. There have been meetings (though they are few) that I have left feeling like we accomplished so much. These kinds of meetings are so important and valuable.

Two weeks ago, after having a stream of horrible meetings, a light bulb came on and I began to walk over to my bookshelf. "There it is!" I then dusted off the cover of a book I've had for a few years called Death By Meeting by Partrick Lencioni.

A friend and former boss, Ryan Russell, had the whole Youth Team read this book a few years back. I remember it being a really great book with loads of insights, but I couldn't really remember what those insights were exactly. Thus, I began to re-read it. Two days later I was finished - it's that good! It's written as a fable about Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software. Casey is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn't know how to solve. Through it Lencioni helps us see some of the biggest obstacles that we face in leading meetings and offers solutions on how to fix them.

I am excited to try his suggestions out in the meetings that I lead. I am also jazzed to give some feedback and suggestions to other meetings I am a part of. Not that the book provides all the answers to instantly make your meetings a success, but it does offer many foundational principles that can drastically change your meeting's outcome. But I shall wait and see if mine get any better. I will make sure to keep you posted :-)

On a side note, Partrick Lencioni will be speaking at this year's Leadership Summit. The Summit is put on by the Willow Creek Association and is an awesome leadership Conference. My church, Central Christian Church, is a host site for it and I encourage any one in leadership to go. But hurry! The earlier bird registration deadline is June 29th! Click HERE to get registered.

Here's a clip of Patrick talking about conflict - something he addresses in this book