Meetings Suck

"You hear it all the time. It's the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on. Except it's not actually true. Meetings don't suck--we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better. In Meetings Suck, world renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar. This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensures that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away. In the process, you'll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work."--Page [4] of cover.

"You hear it all the time. It's the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on. Except it's not actually true. Meetings don't suck--we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better. In Meetings Suck, world renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time effective meetings to help you and your company soar. This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensures that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away. In the process, you'll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work."--Page [4] of cover.

The guide that proves your meetings don't have to suck! There's a big dull elephant in the boardroom: this meeting! Most of the millions of meetings held in the world today are a monumental waste of time and talent. Worse still, most of the so-called solutions and books for boring meetings are twice as boring. Boring Meetings Suck provides tips and tactics to deliver "Get-In, Get-It-Done, or Get-Out" style meetings, while also tackling what most prefer to avoid; that you don't have to BE in charge of a meeting to TAKE charge of a meeting. This entertaining and take-no-prisoners guide is full of easily deployed SRDs?Suckification Reduction Devices?that will help you make your next meeting both efficient and effective. Empowers attendees to politely speak up and get a meeting back on track, or graciously get out, without being fired Shows how hosts can capitalize on technology, learning to crowd-source problems and increase participation Defines surefire methods to get meetings to start and end on time and not have the speaker read the slides STOPS over-invitation syndrome The author has appeared before many major corporate clients, and was named a "Top Business Professional Under 40" by American City Business Journals Your meetings do not have to bore, nor must they suck. Instead, get the winning techniques in Boring Meetings Suck, and make your meetings awesome in their engagement and productivity, or stop having them!

Improve Every Retrospective! Real Solutions for Every Team Leader, Facilitator, and Participant “. . . Aino has shared a robust, curated list of antipatterns and how to avoid them. . . . And she has shared so much more than tips and techniques. You will find a gold mine--with precious nuggets, including her personal experiences, effective facilitation resources, and pointers for extracting yourself and your team when you're stuck.” --From the Foreword by Diana Larsen, co-author, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement in Lean, Agile, DevOps, and other contexts, but most of us have suffered through at least one retrospective that was a waste of time, or worse. Now, leading agile coach Aino Vonge Corry identifies 24 reasons that retrospectives fail and shows how to overcome each of them. Using the familiar “patterns” approach, Retrospectives Antipatterns introduces antipatterns related to structure, planning, people, distributed teams, and more. Corry shares traps she's encountered and mistakes she's made over more than a decade of leading retrospectives and then presents proven solutions. With her insights and guidance, you can run enjoyable retrospectives that deliver concrete improvements and real value--or at the very least recognize when you are making the same mistake as the author! Create a common language, actionable solutions, and proven plans for solving the retrospective problems you'll encounter most often Recognize symptoms, assess tradeoffs, and refactor your current situation into something better Plan more effectively: decide who should attend and facilitate, when to schedule your retrospective, and how much time to set aside Handle “people” problems: deal with negativity, silence, distrust, disillusionment, loudmouths, and cultural differences Facilitate better “virtual” retrospectives, with tips for online retrospectives included in each antipattern Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

The guide that proves your meetings don't have to suck! There's a big dull elephant in the boardroom: this meeting! Most of the millions of meetings held in the world today are a monumental waste of time and talent. Worse still, most of the so-called solutions and books for boring meetings are twice as boring. Boring Meetings Suck provides tips and tactics to deliver "Get-In, Get-It-Done, or Get-Out" style meetings, while also tackling what most prefer to avoid; that you don't have to BE in charge of a meeting to TAKE charge of a meeting. This entertaining and take-no-prisoners guide is full of easily deployed SRDs?Suckification Reduction Devices?that will help you make your next meeting both efficient and effective. Empowers attendees to politely speak up and get a meeting back on track, or graciously get out, without being fired Shows how hosts can capitalize on technology, learning to crowd-source problems and increase participation Defines surefire methods to get meetings to start and end on time and not have the speaker read the slides STOPS over-invitation syndrome The author has appeared before many major corporate clients, and was named a "Top Business Professional Under 40" by American City Business Journals Your meetings do not have to bore, nor must they suck. Instead, get the winning techniques in Boring Meetings Suck, and make your meetings awesome in their engagement and productivity, or stop having them!

Preface -- Setting the meeting stage -- So many meetings and so much frustration -- Get rid of meetings? no, solve meetings through science -- Evidence-based strategies for leaders -- The image in the mirror is likely wrong -- Meet for 48 minutes -- Agendas are a hollow crutch -- The bigger, the badder -- Don't get too comfortable in that chair -- Deflate negative energy from the start -- No more talking! -- The folly of the remote call-in meeting -- Putting it all together -- Epilogue: trying to get ahead of the science' using science -- Tool: meeting quality self-assessment -- Tool: sample engagement survey and 360 feedback questions on meetings -- Tool: good meeting facilitation checklist -- Tool: huddle implementation checklist -- Tool: agenda template -- Tool: guide to taking good meeting minutes/notes -- Tool: expectations assessment -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Index

A one hundred percent proven plan for one hundred percent growth.

Traditional meetings are a weapon of mass interruption. Long live the Modern Meeting! The average American office worker spends eleven hours in meetings every week. Yet all that time sitting around a conference table hasn’t made us more productive. If anything, meetings have made work worse. Traditional meetings reduce efficiency, kill urgency, and breed compromise and complacency. Worst of all, our dysfunctional meeting culture changes how we focus, what we focus on, and what decisions we make. But there is a solution, a way to have fewer, shorter, more purposeful meetings. It’s called the Modern Meeting Standard. By following its eight simple but radical principles you may never have to attend a useless meeting again. Read This Before Our Next Meeting is the call to action you (and your boss) need.