Read This Before Our Next Meeting: How We Can Get More Done

by Al Pittampalli

Read This Before Our Next Meeting is Al Pittampalli's accessible guide on making meetings more effective, efficient, and worthy of attending The average office worker spends eleven hours in meetings every week. Yet all that time sitting around a conference table hasn't made us more productive. If anything, meetings have made work worse. Traditional meetings reduce efficiency, kill urgency, and breed compromise and complacency. But there is a solution, a way to have fewer, shorter, more purposeful Al Pittampalli's Modern Meeting Standard. By following its eight simple but radical principles you may never have to attend a useless meeting again. 'I dutifully avoid meetings whenever possible, which is pretty much always. If I were to go to meetings, though, I'd want Al to run them.'
Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Conformity

Genres: Business, Self Help, Leadership

80 pages, Paperback

Published September 24, 2015

Reviews

[Vivek Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s still January and not too late to take on an ambitious challenge for this year. Are you stuck in a spiral of non stop bad meetings? Reinvent your meetings !!! Thanks Steven Griesmyer for the recommendation.

The “Modern Meeting” is here to the rescue !!! Al Pittampalli’s book would probably take less than an hour to read but it could bring profound change to your life. BTW, it’s not a book. It’s a manifesto for conducting modern meetings.

He attacks our culture of bad meetings and proposes a bold transformation. A must read if you are frustrated with the current state of meetings and looking for a way out. Some excerpts:

“We’ve fallen victim to mediocre meetings, not about co ordination but about bureaucratic excuse making and the Kabuki dance of company politics.”

“Meetings have become our default stalling tactics.”

“Traditional meeting creates a culture of compromise”

"Meetings need to be less like the endless commercial breaks during a football game, and more like pit stops"

“Meeting can’t make decisions. Leaders can.”

“Limit the number of attendees. With 2 people, you need 1 agreement for unanimity. With 4 people, you need 6 agreements. With 10 people, 45 agreements must be made to come to a consensus on anything”

[Francene · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing read. It leaves you feeling that you just got to be harsh so that meetings can be cut. Make the decision alone if you can, if there are disagreements, force a decision - celebrate being able to make a decision rather than consensus (to his credit, he did make a point about considering how critical the decision is, to decide how fast you should force a decision, but the whole book sounds like trying to reduce meetings at the expense of other factors.

If you need to engage other parties for decision, try to engage them individually instead of putting everyone in a meeting room together. Seriously? Isn’t that wasting more time?

It was also repetitive, with little illustration of how you could practically get this done. Now I feel like I’ve wasted my time just reading this - which is quite ironic given what this book is supposed to achieve.

If you’re still interested to check out this book, maybe just look for a summary - don’t bother reading the whole book.

[Candace W · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with the general ideas, but it doesn't do much to show how to accomplish certain things. Like, great, kick people out who are not prepared. Sounds great, but then it talks about how the people usually the most unprepared are top execs. Ok, great. How do I kick out someone who is of superior authority to me? Additionally, only have praise in the meeting. Okay, sounds great, but then it goes on to say that you don't tolerate unpreparedness in the meeting. How do you praise someone while kicking them out of the meeting for being unprepared? I feel like this was more of a synopsis, just too vague really. I like the ideas though. I truly believe there are so many meetings simply because managers feel it's their job to call them or to exercise their authority.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

VERY insightful book about how we waste time with meetings. The were some good ideas on how to do meetings better, and it has helped me approach meetings differently now. However, it seemed like the book should have been a little longer or maybe just better developed. One section repeated another section. The book felt like a mic of an internal memo at a company and a list of FAQs.

I still HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who runs meetings. It's a short read, so it's worth it even if you don't love it. The ideas are revolutionary in some ways (compared to most work places). Think of this book as a starting place for you to change how you do meetings. You will have to put in work and time to get good at this.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another quick easy read to make implementation super easy. If you're not coming away with action items from your endless meetings, you need this book. If you feel like you need tons of meetings and they're always going over-time, you might need this book.

I think the only thing I didn't care for was the writing style. Sometimes it felt as though I was reading an email from a disgruntled employee who was tired of having time mismanaged from inefficient and unproductive meetings. I totally relate to those feelings.

Overall, a lot of the strategies I'd learned to practice over time managing client meetings, but it was a great reminder and a few new ideas to bring to the table for, or nix from, future meetings.

[Shimista · Rating 5 out of 5]

be intentional with your time and others' time!
great book

[Melynda DeCarlo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lacking in original content.

[Luis Segura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice litte short book, with good tips

[Stephany Efflina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the topic. Since sometimes the meetings that we have are not productive, this book gives insight into what can we do to make fewer meetings and increase productivity.

[Lisa Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick read that packs a punch

[Glenn Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit too repetitive for my liking, there was some decent advice, and I liked the concept. It just didn't live up to my expectations.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there’s definitely some good information in this very slim volume. It is quite repetitive.