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Powerfully Simple Meetings: Your Guide To Fewer, Faster, More Focused Meetings
For most of our early careers, the cofounders of MeetingResult were stuck in conference rooms just like yours. We sat through unproductive, unplanned, unstandardized and over-attended meetings that drove ambiguous outcomes while consuming a lot of our “real work” time. We saw action items, decisions and ideas spark to life only to fade from a lack of meeting follow-up and accountability. And we naively accepted the status quo of meeting performance believing “that’s just the way it is.”
However, as we grew in our careers as leaders and project management professionals, we realized a desperate need to change the status quo of our own meetings. Like a saw to a carpenter, great business meetings are an essential tool that project managers use to deliver successful projects. We witnessed our share of failed projects and we knew if we didn’t sharpen our tools and techniques, our projects would follow the common path of failure (that is, over budget, behind schedule, missed objectives).
We started by developing a meeting process that optimized our project performance. We were focused on bringing the highest level of clarity, accountability and effectiveness to our own meetings. We did extensive research, modeled the best meeting leaders and continued to improve our process through trial and error. We extensively studied what works (and what doesn’t) and we applied these principles firsthand to deliver results in conference rooms and boardrooms just like yours. We received recognition and promotions largely in part to our ability to run great business meetings.
After decades of experience managing literally thousands of meetings, we decided it was time to share this knowledge that revolutionized our professional lives. We packaged our meeting process into a powerfully simple meeting (PSM) system that will enable you and your organization to conduct fewer, faster, more-focused meetings.
Whether in a project, sales or operations environment, it gives us great satisfaction to see leaders implement our meeting process and reap the benefits that virtually anyone can achieve if they consistently follow the principles and processes described in this book.
However, as we grew in our careers as leaders and project management professionals, we realized a desperate need to change the status quo of our own meetings. Like a saw to a carpenter, great business meetings are an essential tool that project managers use to deliver successful projects. We witnessed our share of failed projects and we knew if we didn’t sharpen our tools and techniques, our projects would follow the common path of failure (that is, over budget, behind schedule, missed objectives).
We started by developing a meeting process that optimized our project performance. We were focused on bringing the highest level of clarity, accountability and effectiveness to our own meetings. We did extensive research, modeled the best meeting leaders and continued to improve our process through trial and error. We extensively studied what works (and what doesn’t) and we applied these principles firsthand to deliver results in conference rooms and boardrooms just like yours. We received recognition and promotions largely in part to our ability to run great business meetings.
After decades of experience managing literally thousands of meetings, we decided it was time to share this knowledge that revolutionized our professional lives. We packaged our meeting process into a powerfully simple meeting (PSM) system that will enable you and your organization to conduct fewer, faster, more-focused meetings.
Whether in a project, sales or operations environment, it gives us great satisfaction to see leaders implement our meeting process and reap the benefits that virtually anyone can achieve if they consistently follow the principles and processes described in this book.
151 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 20, 2014
13 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 5, 2024
This elaborate advertisement manages to be worth the paper it's printed on by writing no nonsense prose, not overstaying its welcome, and adopting one or two bits of creative framing. However, any good will I might have had evaporated when this descended into ad copy for online meeting software in the last chapter.
I run a lot of meetings, so I was doubtful that this would have new ideas for me, but there were some welcome tips about the pre-meeting process, admonitions against overly detailed meeting minutes, and ideas about measurable meeting metrics. I found those valuable. The rest of the book takes an extremely light touch, sharing such burning insights as "the meeting leader needs to pay attention during meetings", because it's impossible to prescribe a one-size-fits all approach to all types of meetings. This was mostly inoffensive, but not a lot of insight if you're a confident meeting leader.
Ultimately though, this is saved by being brisk. It doesn't waste ink, and the metaphorical diversions are often less than a paragraph, so any strained metaphors exit left quickly. It weighs in at 148 pamphlet sized pages, printed in large font, and as a result is that it's extremely short. I read it in ~3 sittings.
So is it worth trading an hour or three for a few new meeting tips? On the balance, probably. Though you can stop reading before the end when it reveals itself as an elaborate, real-life, pop-up ad.
I run a lot of meetings, so I was doubtful that this would have new ideas for me, but there were some welcome tips about the pre-meeting process, admonitions against overly detailed meeting minutes, and ideas about measurable meeting metrics. I found those valuable. The rest of the book takes an extremely light touch, sharing such burning insights as "the meeting leader needs to pay attention during meetings", because it's impossible to prescribe a one-size-fits all approach to all types of meetings. This was mostly inoffensive, but not a lot of insight if you're a confident meeting leader.
Ultimately though, this is saved by being brisk. It doesn't waste ink, and the metaphorical diversions are often less than a paragraph, so any strained metaphors exit left quickly. It weighs in at 148 pamphlet sized pages, printed in large font, and as a result is that it's extremely short. I read it in ~3 sittings.
So is it worth trading an hour or three for a few new meeting tips? On the balance, probably. Though you can stop reading before the end when it reveals itself as an elaborate, real-life, pop-up ad.
March 10, 2018
There was a lot of helpful content in this book. It is a little bit of a dry read. For it being such a short book, it took me longer than expected to get through it because of the constant fight against sleep. The practical skills were very valuable. It shed light on many practices I have been doing while running a meeting and much more I hadn't even considered. All and all, I would recommend this to any person who has to be involved in a lot of meetings so they can have a clear understanding of how to make each meeting more effective.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews