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Will there be Donuts?: Start a business revolution one meeting at a time
The very word ‘meeting’ conjures up images of time wasted in badly lit, airless offices. Of sitting around tables, unsure why you are there & wishing you were somewhere else. The only perk the sweet snack on a plate in the middle of the table.‘Will there be Donuts?” helps you reclaim your working life and make meetings 100% more effective.
“Will There Be Donuts?” is about a big mistake that almost all companies are going to make this year. And the next. And the one after that. We’ll call it nearly meeting.It happens the length and breadth of the business world, from boardroom to shop floor.
‘Will There Be Donuts?’ is business expert David Pearl’s first book and he draws on his 2 decades of consulting with some of the biggest companies in the world to re-educate the reader on how to hold meetings and, crucially, how to make them great.
His client list is a who’s who of FTSE and NYSE names and they seek his advice on how to engage employees at every level to make their meetings more efficient, effective and engaging.His list of achievements in the field • Identifying £30million of savings by changing ineffective meetings at GSK.• Persuading the CEO of Skandia International to saw through his boardroom table.• Showing the Department of Work & Pensions that having your mobile phone on in a meeting could be seen as a good thing.At every level of an organisation, not just the very top. if your meetings are ineffective then it’s likely that your business is too. “Will There Be Donuts?” will reinvigorate you as a person and as an employer/employee.Consider the are in a role which requires you to attend three hours of meetings a day. Let’s say you’d score those meetings 70% effective. Let’s also imagine there are 100 people like you in the company and that your average wage is £60k.You personally just wasted 5 whole weeks in meeting time this year. Your company lost a combined 2500 days of productivity; that’s the equivalent of 11 person-years costing the company £675,000. What’s more, if you were to continue at this rate for a conventional career, you’d be burning a total of 9 years, 6 months and 3 days of your working life. All for the sake of some ineffective meetings.“Will There Be Donuts?” will help you reclaim your working life.
“Will There Be Donuts?” is about a big mistake that almost all companies are going to make this year. And the next. And the one after that. We’ll call it nearly meeting.It happens the length and breadth of the business world, from boardroom to shop floor.
‘Will There Be Donuts?’ is business expert David Pearl’s first book and he draws on his 2 decades of consulting with some of the biggest companies in the world to re-educate the reader on how to hold meetings and, crucially, how to make them great.
His client list is a who’s who of FTSE and NYSE names and they seek his advice on how to engage employees at every level to make their meetings more efficient, effective and engaging.His list of achievements in the field • Identifying £30million of savings by changing ineffective meetings at GSK.• Persuading the CEO of Skandia International to saw through his boardroom table.• Showing the Department of Work & Pensions that having your mobile phone on in a meeting could be seen as a good thing.At every level of an organisation, not just the very top. if your meetings are ineffective then it’s likely that your business is too. “Will There Be Donuts?” will reinvigorate you as a person and as an employer/employee.Consider the are in a role which requires you to attend three hours of meetings a day. Let’s say you’d score those meetings 70% effective. Let’s also imagine there are 100 people like you in the company and that your average wage is £60k.You personally just wasted 5 whole weeks in meeting time this year. Your company lost a combined 2500 days of productivity; that’s the equivalent of 11 person-years costing the company £675,000. What’s more, if you were to continue at this rate for a conventional career, you’d be burning a total of 9 years, 6 months and 3 days of your working life. All for the sake of some ineffective meetings.“Will There Be Donuts?” will help you reclaim your working life.
- GenresNonfictionManagement
307 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2012
19 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 29, 2013
Amusing and sardonic, often cringe inducing observations on one of modern work's most annoying facets. The book is slight but immensely readable and has enough good tips to stop you from falling back into your own meeting bad habits.
October 29, 2018
This is a neat little book on how we can have more valuable meetings in the workplace and how to get better outcomes from meetings and not accept those which we cannot contribute to or have any value add. It is a good reminder especially for those of us in the corporate world. Good practical examples however as I finished the book I did wonder how much had sunk in and whether this level of change can be implemented. A good fast read
April 28, 2014
Meetings are the bane of modern-day business. Is there any way to make them not so long, boring and unproductive?
First of all, exchange the donuts and soda for something much healthier, like water and protein bars. The sugar rush, followed by the mid-afternoon sugar crash, helps no one.
Why do people attend meetings? It's a nice alternative to doing actual work, technology makes it possible, we confuse "efficient" and "effective", and we forget that there is an alternative.
Looking at the anatomy of meetings, there is a big difference between what a meeting is about, and the intention. Make sure the "right" people are at your meeting, like the Leader, the Recorder, the Facilitator and the Coach. Look at things from the point of view of your customers. Read magazines that you would not normally read; listen to other radio stations. Who attends meetings? Do they have to be there?
What can be done? The average hotel "business conference room" is a windowless room in the basement with harsh artificial lighting. Stay out of that room. Hold your meeting in the hotel lounge, or, even better, hold it outside. Back at the office, consider getting rid of your big, rectangular conference table, and replacing it with several smaller tables with swivel chairs.
Have an agenda, and stick to it (but leave room for the unexpected). Is this meeting to brainstorm new ideas, or to keep everyone informed on recent developments? Don't let anyone change the focus of the meeting, or otherwise monopolize it. Impose a Fine Jar, where all participants are required to pay if they are caught texting during the meeting.
This book is very much worth reading for companies of all sizes. Even small changes in a company's meetings can only help. Some sort of summary or bullet points would have made this book even better, but, yes, it is worth the money.
First of all, exchange the donuts and soda for something much healthier, like water and protein bars. The sugar rush, followed by the mid-afternoon sugar crash, helps no one.
Why do people attend meetings? It's a nice alternative to doing actual work, technology makes it possible, we confuse "efficient" and "effective", and we forget that there is an alternative.
Looking at the anatomy of meetings, there is a big difference between what a meeting is about, and the intention. Make sure the "right" people are at your meeting, like the Leader, the Recorder, the Facilitator and the Coach. Look at things from the point of view of your customers. Read magazines that you would not normally read; listen to other radio stations. Who attends meetings? Do they have to be there?
What can be done? The average hotel "business conference room" is a windowless room in the basement with harsh artificial lighting. Stay out of that room. Hold your meeting in the hotel lounge, or, even better, hold it outside. Back at the office, consider getting rid of your big, rectangular conference table, and replacing it with several smaller tables with swivel chairs.
Have an agenda, and stick to it (but leave room for the unexpected). Is this meeting to brainstorm new ideas, or to keep everyone informed on recent developments? Don't let anyone change the focus of the meeting, or otherwise monopolize it. Impose a Fine Jar, where all participants are required to pay if they are caught texting during the meeting.
This book is very much worth reading for companies of all sizes. Even small changes in a company's meetings can only help. Some sort of summary or bullet points would have made this book even better, but, yes, it is worth the money.
June 21, 2015
I was given this book as a present when it first came out in the UK. I didn't immediately read it, as I am now happily retired in the countryside writing novels. My only meetings these days are with my laptop. Oh, and the roses and the tomatoes. These horticultural meetings are usually one-sided ('Did anyone tell you you've got greenfly ?' or `You'd look nice sliced up with a cucumber'). But one gloomy day I sat down by the fire and started `Donuts'. By the following evening, it was finished, and I was suffering from the Aching Sides Syndrome. What does it say on the back cover?' Entertaining, amusing' ? Think: `Marx brothers in the Boardroom'. It also says `David Pearl is on a mission to re-energise the workplace'. Magic words...at the end of this book I was ready to jump out of the chair, abandon the novel, throw my slippers at the tomatoes and go out and start a business. Item One on the agenda: 'Call a meeting. Note to self: bring a chainsaw.'
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January 1, 2022
was looking for another book on gathering with intention especially focus on work meetings and this fit the bill. The first 1/4-1/2 had some great takeaways but it was a lot of repetition after that for me.
July 7, 2013
Read my full review:http://bit.ly/17ZOYOy
My opinion: A lot of commonsense meeting rules. Although maybe not so commonsense since I have been in many a meeting where I was beating my head on the table with how it was run. Specifically enjoyed the information on hosting video and tele-conferencing.
I must admit that this book tended to be a bit too wordy for me. I like my business books concise with key take-aways and that was definitely missing in this book.
My opinion: A lot of commonsense meeting rules. Although maybe not so commonsense since I have been in many a meeting where I was beating my head on the table with how it was run. Specifically enjoyed the information on hosting video and tele-conferencing.
I must admit that this book tended to be a bit too wordy for me. I like my business books concise with key take-aways and that was definitely missing in this book.
October 18, 2016
Its a slow start and David's conversational style takes a little adaption - or it did for me! As the book gathers pace it's a fun assessment of why meetings go wrong and what to do in the planning to correct them. His matrix of meeting intent is a useful tool to think through when calling meetings to ensure that participation is appropriate in terms of intendees and their engagement. Worth a quick read.
September 4, 2012
Really enjoyed this. Yes, it's a business self-help book. But it's witty, practical and not at all patronising. Just a really good look at how to make meetings more fun, productive and inspiring.
August 29, 2012
Love the pretext of the book but nothing very new here - a bit disappointing.
August 6, 2013
Interessante e stimolante.
August 20, 2014
a useful book for enterpreneurs but it gets quite boring when he repeats things.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews