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Patrick M. Lencioni

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Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series Book 19) Kindle Edition

by Patrick M. Lencioni (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 2,321 ratings

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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.

From the brand

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

death by meeting book, patrick lencioni, business meetings, meeting leadership

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

The business meeting—a necessary evil or a vital and invigorating component of running an organization? According to management consultant Lencioni (The Five Temptations of a CEO), meetings should fit the latter description, but more often than not, he says, they don't. In this lackluster audio fable, Lencioni offers practical advice on how to revitalize your business by energizing your business meetings, but his pallid, passive prose would challenge the most skilled narrator, and Arthur is no exception. The voice Arthur lends Will, the young hero of this tale, resembles that of Sesame Street's Ernie on downers, and the various inflections he gives business owner Casey McDaniel and his management team don't make up for the characters' lack of character. Nevertheless, Lencioni's message comes across loud and clear—meetings should be interactive, not passive, and they should be structured (i.e., issues of immediate importance should be discussed in "weekly tactical" meetings, and issues that will fundamentally affect the business should be addressed in "monthly strategic" meetings). Although managers will find this advice worthwhile, they would gather just as much if they skipped the sluggish fable and listened to the last few tracks.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

Review

"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

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.

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

About the Author

Patrick Lencioni is the founder and president of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational effectiveness. His clients include Novell, Avnet, Excite@home, and the Make-A-Wish-Foundation. He is the author of The Five Temptations of a CEO, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Jack Arthur won an Audie Award from the Audio Publishers Association in 2005 for his reading of Death by Meeting published by Macmillan Audio.

From AudioFile

The author of THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM, Lencioni is an experienced West Coast business consultant with a good grasp of team functioning. In a slow-moving audio production, he uses a parable to frame his advice on how to get value from time spent in meetings. He says meetings are like movies in that they need conflict and resolution to hold people's attention. They also require seriousness of purpose, diligent preparation, and a persistent focus on stated goals. After the parable finally concludes, explicit advice is given about providing drama and structure, but it's not elaborated soon enough to offer the kind of pointed lesson most business listeners want. T.W. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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: #84,211 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #16 in Running Meetings & Presentations (Kindle Store)
- #53 in Business Decision-Making
- #53 in Business Communication Skills

Customer Reviews:
4.6 2,321 ratings

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Patrick M. Lencioni

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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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Amazon Customer

Not what I expected- much better!

Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2024

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Mr. Lencioni was artful in his presentation- it engages you from the beginning, which allows him to get his points across - and they make sense. I hope that I am able to bring some of these strategies to my own teams!

One person found this helpful

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Paul

Great book for Businesses

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2024

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Everyone in the corporate world should be reading this book. Everyone can relate to the topic and need to work towards more effective meetings.

One person found this helpful

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Adomas Kontautas

Some Structure for Meetings is Better Than None

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2023

Verified Purchase

Like many business books, this one too suffers from a lack of scientific backing. Perhaps this topic doesn't lend itself to much rigorous research. Nonetheless, I believe the formula this book presents for structuring company meetings is solid and worth trying out for at least a couple of months.

The idea of having different types of meetings, each centered around a specific context, seems logical. While this approach may increase the number of meetings you have, it could potentially lead to higher productivity for your entire team.

As I mentioned earlier, the author doesn't provide much evidence to support his ideas. He claims that his scriptwriting experience and love for movies inspired his approach, so only time will tell if it will work for your organization.

3 people found this helpful

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Michael

Excellent edition for my dissertation literature review (Chapter 2)

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2023

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This book was not what I expected from the title: It is NOT anti-meeting; it is supportive of productive- meetings. The "fable" is relevant and helps to understand Lencioni's advice about how to conduct productive meetings that employees want to attend.

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2023

Verified Purchase

I have a hard time reading most books, they don’t usually grab my attention, between kids and daily life. This was assigned as part of a class, so I was not looking forward to it, but surprisingly got sucked into it and it kept my attention to the point where I couldn’t put it down. Definitely recommend to anyone who has meetings at work!

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John W. Pearson

The Myth of Too Many Meetings

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2011

Verified Purchase

This is easy to admit--I cannot improve on Patrick Lencioni's fast-reading, get-the-four-big-ideas-immediately book. So, I'll just quote him in this review.

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.

20 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Good read

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2024

Pretty good book

Business novel about meetings

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2010

Verified Purchase

Death by Meeting is another one of the Patrick Lencioni's business novels (the most well-known one probably being The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series) Like other Lencioni books, it starts with a imaginary story where Lencioni's principles are used and ends with a short summary of the theory and point he tries to make.

The first 200 pages cover the story about Casey who is a CEO of a computer games company. The company does well, but has a problem with their meetings which are boring, slow and useless. The company is bought and Casey's job is in trouble unless he fixes the meetings. He hires Will who brings in new ideas and compares meetings to making movies. Stealing ideas from making good movies and TV series, he gradually helps improve the meetings at the company and tada! Casey keeps his job.

The last 40 pages cover the three principles for fixing bad meetings. The first being a lack of conflict (resonating his work from Five Dysfunctions). Within meetings people should express their viewpoints and argue to learn and finally agree and make decisions. The second is purpose or context. Lencioni argues that most meetings try to solve too much problems and should focus. Each meeting should have a different purpose and stick to that. The rhythm in which you have the meetings will depend on its purpose. The last problem he describes is that meetings have such a bad name that people are preventing them. He argues meeting IS work and that they shouldn't be prevented ... but fixed.

All in all, Death by Meeting was an enjoyable book if you like Lencioni's style of writing business novels. He makes good points. I disagreed with his opinion on still having to have the one leader because consensus decisions are bad, but other than that most of the points he makes are relevant and valid. If you enjoyed five dysfunctions, then this is recommended. Otherwise, its just ok. I've been doubting between rating it 3 or 4 stars. 4 stars since I do enjoy business novels including this one. 3 stars because 260 pages for the points he is making is a little bit much :)It could be made in about 50 pages probably. In the end, I decided to go with 3 stars.

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Amazon Customer

Lenchione is awsome

Reviewed in Mexico on May 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

Great book, and so true, even though I haven't been able to implement everything, it has helped to at least understand more about what meetings should have.

Andrew L'Heureux

awesome Book

Reviewed in Canada on October 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

So well written about a boring subject. It is done in a narrative style that I couldn't put it down. I was thinking four in the morning stop reading go to bed but no. I had to finish. Must fo anyone who has to endure meetings. Helpful practical advice about why meeting are often terrible and how they can be awesome.

One person found this helpful

Domenico

A bit useful but badly written.

Reviewed in Italy on October 19, 2018

Verified Purchase

A quite boring book.

Sriniwas Narayanan

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on January 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

Very Apt and useful

Miau

Pego de surpresa

Reviewed in Brazil on September 27, 2015

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Confesso que quando comecei a ler esse livro, pensei que seria uma história que falaria mal das reuniões.
Fui pego de surpresa porque Lencioni diz justamente o contrário; as reuniões são uma ferramenta poderosa para os líderes dentro das organizações.
Então por que a grande maioria das pessoas abomina as reuniões? A teoria dele é que não sabemos conduzi-las e misturamos assuntos táticos e estratégicos nos mesmos encontros.
Assim, a proposta dele é separar as reuniões da seguinte forma:
- Reuniões diárias para check-in
- Reuniões semanais operacionais (táticas)
- Reuniões mensais para assuntos estratégicos e
- Trimestrais off-site para revisões da estratégia e team building.

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