Death by Meeting - A Rotaract Guide

One of the best things about my work at a consulting firm is the long lines interesting-looking books that line the office walls. If I read every book on the shelves (which my CEO seems to have done already) I'll be a walking consulting firm all on my own.

So I started with 'Death by Meeting' by Patric Lencioni.

The first 217 pages are a mini-novel that put the model in context, and the next 37 pages summarize the meeting aspects.

How to read:

The novel part of the book does such a good job that I would just skip to 'Problem #1' on page 225 and read about how to make my meetings better from there. Or, if you don't have time to read the novel, start from p. 218 and your golden.

The takeaway:

Death by Meeting prescribes 4 Types of Meetings

1. The 5-minute Daily Check-in
2. The 45-90 minute Weekly Tactical Meeting
3. The 120-240 minute Monthly Strategic Meeting
4. The 1-2 day Quarterly off-site reviews

How to Apply to Rotaract:

Rotaract is a special situation because we meet once a week, but the meeting strategies listed here can work pretty well if we stretch the time-span.

• Combined 'daily check-in' & lightning round at the beginning of each weekly meeting.
• Tactical meeting once a month.
• Strategic meeting for 2-4 hours every 4 months on a Saturday (if we have a pressing strategic need we can schedule an Ad Hoc strategic meeting for the Saturday immediately after our Tuesday meeting).
• Off-site "Quarterly Review" twice a year, we have an off-site where we all go to someones house or somewhere to review the really big picture.

I'd suggest that one of those off-sites be a whole- day meeting at someone's house on a Friday or Saturday, and the other be a weekend away in Fujairah or Oman or somewhere. - Especially if we have somewhere where we can all stay for free.

A Description of Each Type of Meeting:

1 The 5-minute Daily Check-in: Share your activities and schedule.

Keys to Success:

• Do the entire meeting standing.
• I mean it! Don't sit down!
• Keep the meeting to administrative, logistical topics only.
• Don't cancel unless not a single person can make it: even two people is enough to make it effective.

2 The 45-90 minute Weekly Tactical Meeting: Review the weekly metrics and activities, and resolve obstacles and tactical issues.

• 'How' is tactical, 'what' & 'why' are strategic)

Round 1: 8 minute lightning round: Each member gets 60 seconds to I indicate their top 2 or 3 priorities for the week.

Round 2: Progress Review: Report on the metrics that make or break your organization.

Round 3: Tactic Generation with an iterative, Real-time Agenda: The agenda of the rest of the meeting is based on your organization's performance measured against its goals.

• The important topics will jump out of the first two rounds and the ensuing discussion.
• Remember, these are topics that must be addressed in order to ensure that short term objectives are not in danger of being missed.
• Make a list of anything that is not tactical and postpone discussion of anything on that list until your strategic meetings.

Keys to Success:

• Set the agenda only AFTER everybody has a put forward their initial reports.
• Delegate strategic discussions to the Monthly Strategic Meeting.
• If the issue can't wait, delegate it to an ad-hoc strategic meeting. But don't let it but into your tactical meeting time.

3 120-240 minute Monthly Strategic Meeting: discuss, analyze, brainstorm, and decide on critical issues that will affect the organization's long term success.

Keys to success:

• Limit the meeting to discussing at most 2 topics.
• Prepare beforehand with research and thought experiments.
• The facilitator needs to draw out ideological conflict: Ie the differences in opinion that people have, so that it can all be aired so that as much information as possible is available to the people making decisions.

4 1-2 day Quarterly off-site reviews: review your strategy, industry trends, the 'competitie landscape', your key personel, and your team development.

Keys to success:

• Get out of your normal environment.
• Focus on work: limit social activities.
• Don't over structure the schedule.
• Don't try to do to much all at once.

The end:

I'm one book down out of about 200. We'll see how many I can get through during the year that I am club secretary. If anything that I read applies to Rotaract, I'll be sure to write about it.