I have traditionally been a meeting hater, and I picked up this book hoping it would give a solution to the problem of “too many meetings”. Instead, it came as a surprise when Patrick advocated having more meetings in this book. He points out that meetings are not bad, but badly organised. He correlates meetings with movies (yes, really) to show how meetings should be more fun than movies…

The book is cleverly divided into two parts – The Fable and The Model. The first part is in the form of a novel with normal characters like we encounter everyday in our professional lives. The author illustrates his point of what is lacking in our meetings, how to make them more effective and a productive experience. The second part summarizes his concepts on how to make meetings better by having four different types of meetings – • The Daily Check In (5 minutes, happens daily) • Weekly Tactical (45-90 minutes, happens weekly) • Monthly Strategic or Ad Hoc Strategies (2-3 hours, happens monthly or ad-hoc) • Quarterly off-site review (2 days, happens quarterly) It is a tough pill to swallow when the author compares movies with meetings. Lencioni… Read the rest

We come across conversations daily in our lives that are on the lines of “You can’t do it“, or “Nobody can do it“, or “This is impossible” or “Why in the hell are you doing this?“. We all live in societies and societies have rules. There are legal rules, there are religious rules, and then there are social rules. Everybody live their lives according to these rules. Over time, these rules becomes so intervined with our day to day lives that we don’t even think of doing something out of these rules. We even scrowl on anyone who talks about breaking these rules.

“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – is a popular quote by Napolean Hill. We all have infinite potential waiting to be tapped. I don’t believe there is anything one can’t do. A two year child can’t read and write, but we don’t say “This kid can’t do math or read books, and he is a failure”. We don’t say that because we know that we can teach and make that child better. Then why is it okay for such statements to be used for grown ups. Who said we… Read the rest