PREFACE

This book has been a long time coming because we didn’t want to contribute to the noise about meetings. On the other hand, we knew we had new things to say.

We know for sure that meetings can be places where you can do productive work—right in the meeting. Achieving that goal requires moving beyond meeting mechanics. We are offering you a seismic shift (not a set of tweaks) in the way you view, use, and participate in meetings. Let’s Stop Meeting Like This gives you a logical system you can use productively, even as you read the book. Using the same work design principles that transformed the factory floor and made video games engaging, the book captures a flexible, repeatable process used to design thousands of meetings, making it accessible to all. With adaptations for routine, smaller meetings and large, direction-changing ones, you will learn to restructure your meetings so that

• Work gets done

• Everyone is engaged and respected

• The meeting is energizing, not energy sapping

• Time is valued, not wasted