I just read Al Pittampalli’s “Read This Before Our Next Meeting” over a lunch break and wanted to post a few thoughts. First – this gives you a clue of how short this book is as I literally read this in about 30 minutes. But there’s some good stuff in here as I was looking for some thoughts on staff meeting facilitation.
The essence of the book is that most meetings are working against you and causing more unproductiveness than they are solving. The author argues for streamlined meetings that ruthlessly focus on decision making and eliminate anything that isn’t moving towards decision making and a tangible action plan. There are some good tactics for types of meetings that you might have.
I’m still thinking about what an application of some of these thoughts would look like in a ministry context when production isn’t the only objective of a meeting. There’s spiritual foundations and community/fellowship components that aren’t there in the business world. But for the nuts and bolts of task management and problem solving, there’s great input on what you should allow or not allow in your meetings.
The best section or most applicable immediately to me was the section on brainstorming meetings. There were some ideas that really were helpful – like utilizing people that don’t have a lot at stake in the problem to do a lot of brainstorming because they aren’t personally accountable for the results. I think that is genius when trying to expand the possibilities of what a team can consider in either product creation or in problem solving.
I can see some places where this approach would be good, but in my context it’s hard to see implementing this wholeheartedly. However, it highlights the central purpose of meetings and the importance of thinking about the place of meetings within the overall purpose of your team. Meetings should serve the overall purpose of what you’re ultimately going for. If you’re wanting a brief stimulus to your thoughts on your meetings and maybe how to facilitate better, here’s another option in addition to Lencioni’s “Death by Meeting.”
