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Will There Be Donuts? Start a business revolution one meeting at a time by David Pearl
A MEETING is the activity where one takes minutes and waste hours. I recall being told that you can either meet or work, but you cannot do both at the same time. Both of these assertions are misleading.
Meetings are not going to go away, nor should they.
If you have any reason to doubt that, you need only apply the test that author David Pearl uses with his clients: Look at your fingernails – very few Fin24 users will have coal dust, soil or heavy machine oil underneath them.
Today, knowledge and ideas are primary assets. Meetings are where these assets are formed, traded, and where value is added.
The title of this book, Will There Be Donuts?, is taken from an experience of an editor at HarperCollins publishers who was trying to get colleagues to go a meeting. To overcome their reluctance to attend yet another book review meeting, he had to entice them.
He achieved this not by talking up the beauty of the prose of the book he was presenting or the logic of the ideas, but by promising to bring doughnuts!
If doughnuts are the most appealing aspect of your meetings, this book is undoubtedly for you.
David Pearl describes himself as a Meeting Doctor. He trains companies to conduct more effective meetings and designs large-scale meetings.
Most meetings are what he calls “nearly meetings” as opposed to “really meetings.”
A “nearly meeting” is one where the participants get very little value for the time it took to get together. “Really meetings,” on the other hand, are quite different. Instead of each participant holding onto their own ideas, they build on each other’s.
Instead of the usual flood of “nos” that stifle creativity, the meeting is “yes, and…” orientated, with ideas building on each other. If the purpose of being together is to benefit from each other’s ideas and so produce something of greater value, “nearly meetings” are a failure and “really meetings” are the answer.
Pearl offers a unique and valuable way of thinking about meetings - a meeting is a living being. The task is not to fix meetings, but to keeping them healthy, vital and alive.
When the meeting is failing to produce interest and value, the focus should not be on who is at fault. Rather, it should be on what this meeting needs. Is it more energy, more information, a break, food, air or any of the other life-giving factors?
The “why” of a meeting is a crucial and most often overlooked factor. The philosopher Nietzsche said: "He who has a why can bear almost any how." This includes long and difficult meetings.
Most meetings only have a “what” articulated in the agenda, without the “why.” The “why” gives energy to the “what.”
Why do we have our Monday morning meeting? If it is to review the figures, or formulate the plan for the week, it needs a “why”.
The “why” could be: “It is a dangerous world out there and if we go out without preparing we are going to get hurt.”
“We have to be smarter and faster than the competition or we will get eaten – we need everyone’s input to be the smartest we can be.”
“What can this department do this week that has to be done, and that no one else can do?”
The intention is to design meetings that are legendary for adding value. You know you are adding value when no one would miss your meeting or come late.
The “why” of meetings also needs the “who” of meetings. Meetings can only work if the right people are there, for the right reasons and for the right amount of time.
Getting the right people to the meeting for the right reason is rarely achieved by informing them that there will be a meeting on the 4th floor boardroom on Tuesday at 9.
You want the right people to be fully present and to make a meaningful contribution towards building value together.
A personalised note explaining the intention of the meeting and why the person’s participation is so vital and how much of their time you will need is more likely to achieve your objective.
It will take more time than the mass Outlook invitation, but that is a very small price to pay for a valuable contribution.
A valuable meeting, like a superb meal, must be designed. Fast food is assembled. A Rolls-Royce is designed from the chassis up. The setting of the meeting sets both the tone and the significance of the meeting.
Careful attention must be given to the seating, light, beverages and the other factors that make the meeting environment conducive to good work. Equally, the pace, timing and participation must be given careful attention.
For your meeting to be successful, you must be sure of the kind of meeting you need. Meetings come in seven different formats.
These comprise discussion meetings, information sharing, problem solving, decision-making, innovation, selling ideas and meetings simply to socialise. Each one requires a different design to maximise its effectiveness.
This is the first book I have read on how to organise an effective meeting that was not as boring as most meetings.
Pearl has a wicked sense of humour and is a font of creative ideas for making meetings both more real and more effective.
However, you will probably be asking yourself, as did I, is all this effort necessary?
We hold meetings as the primary tool for adding value to knowledge and ideas. These are among the most valuable assets we have.
Conducting effective meetings must surely be one of the more important management and leaderships skills an executive could possess.
With this skill so rare, this is an obvious way to differentiate oneself.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
A MEETING is the activity where one takes minutes and waste hours. I recall being told that you can either meet or work, but you cannot do both at the same time. Both of these assertions are misleading.
Meetings are not going to go away, nor should they.
If you have any reason to doubt that, you need only apply the test that author David Pearl uses with his clients: Look at your fingernails – very few Fin24 users will have coal dust, soil or heavy machine oil underneath them.
Today, knowledge and ideas are primary assets. Meetings are where these assets are formed, traded, and where value is added.
The title of this book, Will There Be Donuts?, is taken from an experience of an editor at HarperCollins publishers who was trying to get colleagues to go a meeting. To overcome their reluctance to attend yet another book review meeting, he had to entice them.
He achieved this not by talking up the beauty of the prose of the book he was presenting or the logic of the ideas, but by promising to bring doughnuts!
If doughnuts are the most appealing aspect of your meetings, this book is undoubtedly for you.
David Pearl describes himself as a Meeting Doctor. He trains companies to conduct more effective meetings and designs large-scale meetings.
Most meetings are what he calls “nearly meetings” as opposed to “really meetings.”
A “nearly meeting” is one where the participants get very little value for the time it took to get together. “Really meetings,” on the other hand, are quite different. Instead of each participant holding onto their own ideas, they build on each other’s.
Instead of the usual flood of “nos” that stifle creativity, the meeting is “yes, and…” orientated, with ideas building on each other. If the purpose of being together is to benefit from each other’s ideas and so produce something of greater value, “nearly meetings” are a failure and “really meetings” are the answer.
Pearl offers a unique and valuable way of thinking about meetings - a meeting is a living being. The task is not to fix meetings, but to keeping them healthy, vital and alive.
When the meeting is failing to produce interest and value, the focus should not be on who is at fault. Rather, it should be on what this meeting needs. Is it more energy, more information, a break, food, air or any of the other life-giving factors?
The “why” of a meeting is a crucial and most often overlooked factor. The philosopher Nietzsche said: "He who has a why can bear almost any how." This includes long and difficult meetings.
Most meetings only have a “what” articulated in the agenda, without the “why.” The “why” gives energy to the “what.”
Why do we have our Monday morning meeting? If it is to review the figures, or formulate the plan for the week, it needs a “why”.
The “why” could be: “It is a dangerous world out there and if we go out without preparing we are going to get hurt.”
“We have to be smarter and faster than the competition or we will get eaten – we need everyone’s input to be the smartest we can be.”
“What can this department do this week that has to be done, and that no one else can do?”
The intention is to design meetings that are legendary for adding value. You know you are adding value when no one would miss your meeting or come late.
The “why” of meetings also needs the “who” of meetings. Meetings can only work if the right people are there, for the right reasons and for the right amount of time.
Getting the right people to the meeting for the right reason is rarely achieved by informing them that there will be a meeting on the 4th floor boardroom on Tuesday at 9.
You want the right people to be fully present and to make a meaningful contribution towards building value together.
A personalised note explaining the intention of the meeting and why the person’s participation is so vital and how much of their time you will need is more likely to achieve your objective.
It will take more time than the mass Outlook invitation, but that is a very small price to pay for a valuable contribution.
A valuable meeting, like a superb meal, must be designed. Fast food is assembled. A Rolls-Royce is designed from the chassis up. The setting of the meeting sets both the tone and the significance of the meeting.
Careful attention must be given to the seating, light, beverages and the other factors that make the meeting environment conducive to good work. Equally, the pace, timing and participation must be given careful attention.
For your meeting to be successful, you must be sure of the kind of meeting you need. Meetings come in seven different formats.
These comprise discussion meetings, information sharing, problem solving, decision-making, innovation, selling ideas and meetings simply to socialise. Each one requires a different design to maximise its effectiveness.
This is the first book I have read on how to organise an effective meeting that was not as boring as most meetings.
Pearl has a wicked sense of humour and is a font of creative ideas for making meetings both more real and more effective.
However, you will probably be asking yourself, as did I, is all this effort necessary?
We hold meetings as the primary tool for adding value to knowledge and ideas. These are among the most valuable assets we have.
Conducting effective meetings must surely be one of the more important management and leaderships skills an executive could possess.
With this skill so rare, this is an obvious way to differentiate oneself.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
