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![Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series Book 19) by [Patrick M. Lencioni]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51wEWrLk3yL._SY346_.jpg)
Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series Book 19) Kindle Edition
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A straightforward framework for creating engaging and exciting business meetings
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life.
In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch.
“How could my life have unraveled so quickly?” he wondered.
In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve. And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams and create environments of engagement and passion.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherJossey-Bass
- Publication dateJuly 23, 2007
- File size792 KB
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From the brand

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Patrick Lencioni is the pioneer of the organizational health movement and the author of 13 bestselling books, including, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Advantage, and The Ideal Team Player. For the past 25 years, Pat and his firm, The Table Group, have provided leaders with products and services to make their organizations more effective, their teams more cohesive, and their employees more fulfilled.
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From the Publisher

WHAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM WITH MEETINGS?
Meetings are boring because they lack drama. Or conflict. This is a shame because most meetings have plenty of potential for drama, which is essential for keeping human beings engaged. Unfortunately, rather than mining for that golden conflict, most leaders of meetings seem to be focused on avoiding tension and ending their meetings on time. And while these may seem noble pursuits, they lie at the heart of bad meetings.
To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict. By doing so, they'll keep people engaged, which leads to more passionate discussions, and ultimately, to better decisions.
Meetings are ineffective because they lack contextual structure. Too many organizations have only one kind of regular meeting, often called a staff meeting. Either once a week or twice a month, people get together for two to three hours of randomly focused discussion about everything from strategy to tactics, from administrivia to culture. Because there is no clarity around what topics are appropriate, there is no clear context for the various discussions that take place. In the end, little is decided because the participants have a hard time figuring out whether they're supposed to be debating, voting, brainstorming, weighing in, or just listening.
To make our meetings more effective, we need to have multiple types of meetings, and clearly distinguish between the various purposes, formats, and timing of those meetings.

THE FOUR MEETINGS
THE DAILY CHECK-IN is a schedule-oriented, administrative meeting that should last no more than five or 10 minutes. The purpose is simply to keep team members aligned and to provide a daily forum for activity updates and scheduling.
THE TACTICAL STAFF is what most people have come to know as staff meetings. These should be approximately an hour in length, give or take 20 minutes, and should focus on the discussion and resolution of issues which effect near term objectives.
THE AD-HOC TOPICAL is the most interesting kind of meeting for leaders, and the most important indicator of a company's strategic aptitude. It is the appropriate place for big topics, those that will have a long-term impact on the business. Each strategic meeting should include no more than one or two topics, and should allow roughly two hours for each topic.
THE QUARTERLY OFF-SITE REVIEW is an opportunity for team members to step away from business, literally and figuratively, to reassess a variety of issues: the interpersonal performance of the team, the company's strategy, the performance of top-tier and bottom-tier employees, morale, competitive threats, and industry trends. These can last anywhere from the better part of a day to two full days each quarter.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
From AudioFile
Review
"A work of fiction with important lessons for management." - Leadership & Organizational Development Journal
"The author is something of a master of the modern fable." Professional Manager
"Highly recommended: you could even take it to your next meeting." - On Target
"Pitches his theory neatly at busy readers." - Supply Management
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Review
—Kris Hagerman, executive vice president, Strategic Operations, VERITAS Software Corporation
"Death By Meeting is about much more than meetings; it's about an entire management philosophy. I read a lot of books on management, and Lencioni's are among the very best. They form the basis for our approach at Silicon Valley Bank."
—Ken Wilcox, CEO, Silicon Valley Bank
"Lencioni has done it again! Insightful. Practical. Ready-to-implement solutions. If you lead people, you can’t afford to miss this book. It’s an absolute must-read."
—Jim Mellado, president, Willow Creek Association
"We've put Pat's theories into practice and they work. Our meetings are more productive, our communication is clearer, and the team’s commitment to decisions is much greater."
—Curt Nonomaque, president and CEO, VHA Inc.
"Meetings are such a cr itical element of effective organizational communication. Lencioni has provided a concise, entertaining, and inventive guide to improving meeting structure, participation, and results. Thumbs up for this insightful tale."
—Sandy Alderson, executive vice president of operations, Major League Baseball
Review
“The author is something of a master of the modern fable….” (Professional Manager, Vol.13, No.6, November 2004)
“…pitches his theory neatly at busy readers by opening with an executive summary.” (Supply Management, 8 July 2004)
"Highly recommended: you could even take it to your next meeting." (On Target, September 2007)
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.From the Inside Flap
DEATH by Meeting
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life.
In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch.
"How could my life have unraveled so quickly?" he wondered.
In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered on a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn't know how to solve. And he doesn't know where or whom to turn to for advice. His staff can't help him; they're as dumbfounded as he is by their torturous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Petersen, enters Casey's world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.From the Back Cover
PRAISE FOR DEATH BY MEETING
"Finally, a real solution to an age-old problem. Meetings may never be the same."
Kris Hagerman, executive vice president, strategic operations, VERITAS Software Corporation
"Death by Meeting is about much more than meetings; it's about an entire management philosophy. I read a lot of books on management, and Lencioni's are among the very best. They form the basis for our approach at Silicon Valley Bank."
Ken Wilcox, CEO, Silicon Valley Bank
"Lencioni has done it again! Insightful. Practical. Ready-to-implement solutions. If you lead people, you can't afford to miss this book. It's an absolute must-read."
Jim Mellado, president, Willow Creek Association
"We've put Pat's theories into practice and they work. Our meetings are more productive, our communication is clearer, and the team's commitment to decisions is much greater."
Curt Nonomaque, president and CEO, VHA Inc.
"Meetings are such a critical element of effective organizational communication. Lencioni has provided a concise, entertaining, and inventive guide to improving meeting structure, participation, and results. Thumbs up for this insightful tale."
Sandy Alderson, executive vice president of operations, Major League Baseball
Product details
- ASIN : B008L03W7O
- Publisher : Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (July 23, 2007)
- Publication date : July 23, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 792 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 256 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #37,980 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping leaders improve their organizations’ health since 1997. His principles have been embraced by leaders around the world and adopted by organizations of virtually every kind including multinational corporations, entrepreneurial ventures, professional sports teams, the military, nonprofits, schools, and churches.
Lencioni is the author of ten business books with over three million copies sold worldwide. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and USA Today.
Prior to founding The Table Group, Lencioni served on the executive team at Sybase, Inc. He started his career at Bain & Company and later worked at Oracle Corporation.
Lencioni lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their four sons.
To learn more about Patrick and The Table Group, please visit www.tablegroup.com.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2020
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But this is a moot point. We don’t go to work to be entertained. We go to work to get paid, and to get paid, we have to get shit done. Suggesting that we sow conflict to keep each other entertained is just bizarre. You know what would be REALLY entertaining in a meeting?? If the boss confessed to having an affair with someone else in the room and then a dude was shocked because HE was also having an affair with that person and then the boss pulled out a gun and shot him. Pretty exciting! But not a productive meeting!
I kept wanting to scream at the author, "OBJECTIVES!!" The meetings I've been to that have been horrible have been so because it wasn’t clear what the point was, or my presence wasn’t necessary for attaining their objectives. Whether there's conflict while attaining objectives in a meeting or not is irrelevant. If people get in a room and immediately agree on everything such that they can proceed with their work, that's a super boring movie, but an interesting, productive, worthwhile meeting. If someone “mines for conflict,” they shouldn’t do so for fun but in a genuine attempt to flush out opposing ideas that may have an effect on the outcome of the objective.
By contrast, if someone in a meeting is rattling off details about things I have nothing to do with, that’s bad not because it’s boring per se or because it has no conflict but because I have nothing to do with it. It’s a waste of my time. It doesn’t help me advance any objectives.
I cannot believe this book is as widely praised as it is. The "story" is absurd, and, as best I can tell, just a paean to male privilege. (A male executive assistant! Can you imagine? Tee hee! And of course, being male unlike other EAs, he basically takes over the company! The dude would have been fired immediately for pulling this shit, but instead everyone listens to him raptly? Give me a break. Don’t quit your day job, Lencioni.) Most of the recommendations only brush up against the real heart of the issue with meetings but are ultimately off the mark. Ugh!
But first...here's a Pop Quiz! Everyone stand up. OK...now remain standing if your job requires you to attend at least one meeting a week. OK...now remain standing if you are in a minimum of five meetings a week (staff meeting, one-on-one meetings, etc.). I know...everyone is still standing. But now...remain standing if you have ever read a book, attended a workshop, viewed a webinar or had coaching on effective meetings management. (Anyone still standing?)
My top book pick in my "Meetings Bucket" is this book--but I've never fully reviewed it here. So...listen to Lencioni talk about "Sneaker Time" (pages 251-252):
"Most executives I know spend hours sending email, leaving voice mail, and roaming the halls to clarify issues that should have been made clear during a meeting in the first place. But no one accounts for this the way they do when they add up time spent in meetings.
"I have no doubt that sneaker time is the most subtle, dangerous, and underestimated black hole in corporate America. To understand it, it is helpful to take a quick look at the basic geometry of an executive team within the context of an organization.
"Consider that an executive team with just seven people has twenty-one combinations of one-to-one relationships that have to be maintained in order to keep people on the same page. That alone is next to impossible for a human being to track.
"But when you consider the dozens of employees down throughout the organization who report to those seven and who need to be on the same page with one another, the communication challenge increases dramatically, as does the potential for wasting time and energy. And so, when we fail to get clarity and alignment during meetings, we set in motion a colossal wave of human activity as executives and their direct reports scramble to figure out what everyone else is doing and why.
"Remarkably, because sneaker time is mixed in with everything else we do during the day, we fail to see it as a single category of wasted time. It never ceases to amaze me when I see executives checking their watches at the end of a meeting and lobbying the CEO for it to end so they can `go do some real work.' In so many cases, the `real work' they're referring to is going back to their offices to respond to e-mail and voice mail that they've received only because so many people are confused about what needs to be done.
"It's as if the executives are saying, 'Can we wrap this up so I can run around and explain to people what I never explained to them after the last meeting?' It is at once shocking and understandable that intelligent people cannot see the correlation between failing to take the time to get clarity, closure, and buy-in during a meeting, and the time required to clean up after themselves as a result."
Whoa! That hits close to home! Good stuff. So get the book, read his leadership fable (in the classic Lencioni style) and begin religiously implementing his four kinds of meetings: 1) Daily Check-in, 2) Weekly Tactical, 3) Monthly Strategic and 4) Quarterly Off-site Review.
Top reviews from other countries

This will appeal to anyone who has struggled though a meeting and walked away wondering what they got out of it. It will also appeal to those who have run such meetings.
Consider this tale a timely reminder that trying to achieve too much in one place often means that not much is achieved. Through focusing on what is realistic, and not being afraid of conflict, meetings can be productive sessions that drive business forward and improve colleague relationships.


I am currently working through how I can improve the participation and outcomes from my regular team meeting.
If you need to improve meetings you run, or those that you are part of then this book will give you very helpful ideas to do it, and a fable to use to explain your reasons as you try to take colleagues with you.

This book shows how managers, leaders - US - need to wake up and get the most out of these gettogethers and make it actual activities. I have been buying this book to all my friends and bosses; finally I am in a position to put this in practice myself!
Many thanks Patrick for making this book an enjoyable read!
