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J. Elise Keith

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Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization Kindle Edition

by J. Elise Keith (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 50 ratings

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How well you meet determines what your group can achieve

When you ask leaders in a high performing organization about the key to their success, the answers are all over the place: failing fast, radical transparency, operational excellence, strong core values... so many different North Stars to follow.

Then, if you ask them for an example–to tell you what that looks like in practice–they will all describe a meeting. Leaders at these organizations have learned to design a sequence of tailored meetings that create a healthy organizational culture and drive forward momentum. They know that meetings are where the action is.

Where the Action Is reveals how leaders in any organization can use meetings to engage their people, simplify communications, and accelerate progress. In it, you'll learn.

- The truth about why there are so many meetings.

- Surprising research revealing that what you think you know about meetings may be wrong.

- Proven techniques that make any meeting productive.

- Five steps to increasing team engagement in meetings.

- The specific meeting practices high-performing organizations use to create a healthy culture and drive results.

- The stories of those who’ve found a way to love their meetings, and those who’ve struggled.

- The 16 distinct types of business meetings and how to use them.

Distilling insights from business management, cognitive research, behavioral psychology, organizational studies, and 10 years of work with organizations big and small, J. Elise Keith’s entertaining and informative book will forever change the way you meet.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If you aspire to fun, productive and efficient meetings you can either learn by trial and error, inflicting much pain on your organization along the way, or benefit from the tips on design and execution Elise Keith lays out in her excellent new book Where the Action Is"
--Neal Bastick, CEO MeetingSphere Collaborative Meeting Solutions

"Keith's book is the first lucid guide to elevate the quality and effectiveness of every meeting in the digital age. Implementing its recommendations will recover significant value to your organization. It's time to heed her advice and make meetings work."
-- Fadi Chehadé, Partner, Abry Partners, former President & CEO, ICANN

"Chock full of stories, tips, and tools, this very readable book is a superb guide to meeting effectiveness. If you lead, plan, or attend meetings this book is for you."
-- Emily and Dick Axelrod, authors of Let's Stop Meeting Like This

"I am honestly bowled over by the wisdom, practical tips, readability, and overall incredible usefulness of this book.
As a meeting facilitator and facilitation skills trainer for the past 25+ years, I can say, unequivocally, that Where the Action Is just may be the best book I have ever read on the topic of meeting design and facilitation. Using concrete examples and impeccable logic, Elise Keith proves the point that we don't necessarily need fewer or shorter meetings, but we need much better meetings. This insightful book shows how it's done.
If you apply the tips and techniques you'll find here, I can guarantee that the quality of your meetings will improve exponentially."
--Nancy Settle-Murphy, author of Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results

"Elise Keith understands meetings at such a high level. And, she has translated these understandings into a truly compelling book chock full of great insights and advice. This book will serve as a fantastic resource to managers and leaders alike."
--Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg, winner of the 2017 Humboldt Prize and author of The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead your Team to Peak Performance

From the Back Cover

Have you ever tried to improve your meetings, only to become overwhelmed by all the rules the experts say you need to follow?
Do you know you need meetings to get work done, but you aren't certain how many, how often, or what kind?
Are you ready to break past the negativity, and connect with the powerful potential for change, progress, and achievement that's only possible when people meet well?
Where the Action Is is a book for leaders seeking to make sense of their meetings and master their business.
Read it to gain:

Clarity about what makes for a successful meeting.
Insight into the 16 types of meetings that drive performance.
Confidence to lead meetings that get results.
Powerful strategies for ensuring effective meetings across your organization.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07CYM7FC4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Second Rise (June 18, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 18, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6413 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 416 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #890,298 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #406 in Running Meetings & Presentations (Kindle Store)
- #789 in Business Teams
- #964 in Running Meetings & Presentations (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 50 ratings

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J. Elise Keith

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J. Elise Keith is the resident meeting maven for Lucid Meetings. Leaders call her blog "a treasure trove of valuable info and guidance" and "a game-changer for our organization." When she isn't working on the industry-leading Lucid Meetings software platform or writing deep meeting thoughts, Elise shares her meeting expertise in presentations that audiences say are "inspiring," "full of practical methods we can apply," and "fill in all the gaps I didn't even know I had! Magnificent!'

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J. Wolfe

Will improve not only your meeting but your business results

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2020

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I just finished reading Where the Action is and find it to be the best book on meeting effectiveness I have read over my long career as an executive, consultant and advisor to leaders. It goes way beyond the mechanics of running an effective meeting. It positions meetings as the key arena for how organizations achieve the outcomes they desire. I loved Elise's admonition to get rid of "meetings." Not the gathering of people to work together but the use of the word meeting itself. As she says, every time a group comes together it is for a specific purpose and that purpose is not to just meet. She has developed a wonderful way of breaking down meeting into their key reasons for people to come together (she has defined 16 key meeting types into a taxonomy for meetings). And then goes on to show how to ensure that meeting achieves its purpose

What's more I can see implied in the principles of how to make meetings more effective the same principles of The Living Organization(R) Model. With her approach to meeting effectiveness you will begin to shift your paradigm, from seeing your organization as a machine focused only on production to a living being focused on creatively satisfying the needs of those you serve.

I highly recommend this book.

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M OD

A must read for anyone interested in breaking out of the cycle of bad meetings!

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019

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This book highlights the self-fulfilling prophecy of bad meetings (a rampant problem) and teaches us in a clear and engaging way how to break out of that cycle. Keith uses a credible narrative of an organization and takes us on a journey of transformation of meeting culture, providing along the way a practical framework and skills needed for highly effective meetings. The book contains some real pearls of wisdom like the spectrum of engagement, perceived meeting quality and net positive impact of meetings, among others.

I also found particularly powerful the classification of types of meetings that she provides, which includes detailed dimensions of each type of meeting - this is especially useful to help understand their different needs and requirements .

One person found this helpful

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Shirley Pearson

Getting value from meetings

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2019

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A great read for anyone interested in ensuring proper leveraged communication. Without communication organisations cant thrive, this book reminds one of how important it is to ensure that your businesses meetings are effective and achieve the outcomes for which they are intended.

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Andrew Webster

Meetings? Buy this book!

Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2018

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Finally! Someone has done the deep hard work to figure out meetings. Thank goodness!
Elise Keith has done the word a huge favor by having done the hard work to figure out all the types of business meeting. Not just the specific types, but also the underlying “physics” of how they all work – she calls it an “operating system” – and has laid it out as book that’s not only easy and delightful to read, but is incredibly well organized as a reference manual.
I work as an organizational coach, helping people who struggle with work. Not with the application of their particular skill, but with how work itself works. In most organizations, this means they have to spend a lot of time moving information about, figuring things out, sharing knowledge, and making decisions. You’d think meeting would help. And yet the single biggest complaint I hear is about “too many meetings”.
And that’s because most meetings are slung together, arrive as an agenda-less email invitation, and people turn up to make sure that they don’t end up in trouble because there missed the meeting. People very highly trained in their specialization don’t necessarily get a training in “work”, and so we get so much waste and misery.
As a result we have, according to Gallup, 70% of US employees who are “not engaged”. In other words, don’t know why their work is important, and may even hate it. Huh. Waddya know?
Anyone who has to facilitate any kind or meeting at work needs this book on their desk permanently. It’s a kindness to your fellow employees! Buy it now, and buy a copy to give away. Please!

2 people found this helpful

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Keis Casas

Great read, a lot of takeaways

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020

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I’ve just finished reading up to Part Three of the book, Where the Action Is: The Meetings that Make or Break Your Organization by J. Elise Keith. The fourth and final part of the book has chapters which can be read separately as each chapter dives deeper into each type of meeting. But even up to just Part Three, there’s so much to takeaway from the book. If I had money to burn (which I don’t) AND I’d be guaranteed that recipients would actually read it, I’d give away copies of this book.

What I find interesting about it is the idea the author shares on how it seems like a cycle that meetings are bad because we’re already resigned to the idea that meetings are bad. So people use it as a crutch or as an excuse. Instead of actually doing something about it, they just think it’s not going to be worth it anyways. There’s also the idea of some individuals misusing meetings to further their egos, as a means to dominate, rather than to advance the team’s goals. So for such individuals who shine in dysfunctional meetings, it’s not in their best interest to “fix” meetings.

Not so much of a fan of the sections with the fictional organization that's trying to fix their meetings. But only because I think I already get her point even without them. To be fair though, they don't take away from the content. I pretty much still enjoyed the book.

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TH

Leverage the info in this book to boost your career and your company's bottom line

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2018

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Anyone who strives to get something done with others would benefit from reading this book. Keith approaches a complex topic - productive interactions between people - with humor, grace and tons of helpful advice.

You will come away with the realization that the number of meetings you have is irrelevant - the only thing that matters is quality.

Loaded with approachable and actionable tactics, entertaining anecdotes, and a dose of meeting science to support it all, Where the Action Is will fundamentally change the way you look at how you spend your time in meetings. Keep this book on your digital shelf - you’ll want to refer to it over and over throughout your professional career.

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Mauro Mileta Menacho

A necessary reading for you, for her, for us, for everyone!

Reviewed in Brazil on June 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

With a pleasant and in an easy-to-comprehend text, Elise captured me since the first page. The book explores not just the meetings themselves, but how they are important for relations, culture, execution and results at work or anywhere! Meetings have been there and will be there forever!

It demystifies the belief that meetings are bad and gives a step-by-step recipe to every type of meeting and how they relate to each other. The meetings taxonomy is really helpful!

I had the opportunity to attend a couple of workshops at Lucid Meetings (Elise's company) and they put the book in practice. They web site has plenty of complementary resources as well :D

Keira

Book review - meeting action/ excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2023

Verified Purchase

Best book on effective meeting systems out there

Martin West

What has winning soccer championships and meetings got in common?

Reviewed in Canada on December 12, 2020

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The magic of Elise’ work on meetings is hidden within the title “where the action is”. In Netflix’s The Playbook, Jose Mourinho’s sixth rule for his “Coach’s Rules for Life” is “Don’t coach the player, coach the team”. In soccer, as in business meetings, it is when the team is in play (and the coach has no control) is when the action needs to happen.

Winning comes from the hard work of building repeatable dynamic structures and processes (yes in meetings). These are established with discipline, practice and constant learning. They are a prerequisite to the many magic moments that change the fortunes of soccer teams and businesses. Elise’s book on structuring meetings focuses on the micro change in how people work together in meetings. It is these disciplines that drive macro level change helping teams score more goals.

One person found this helpful

Frank Thun

A great book about business meetings

Reviewed in Germany on December 17, 2018

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A book just about ordinary business meetings. Down to earth, practical and well researched. I got hooked once I discovered of the "periodic table of business meetings" appearing in my browser during a google search. Recommended!

流れ星

大変内容が盛り沢山な本。Lucidのホームページのガイダンスと一緒にみれば最高。

Reviewed in Japan on June 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

非常に読みやすく、内容的に充実しています。
会議の種類と特徴、そして問題、そのため会議の質を上げていきましょうの流れになっている。
英語文章は短く、難しい単語もあまりでてこない。

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