As we are not in direct contact, can I just suggest that if I lose your interest, you put the book down, stretch your legs and grab a bite?* The sex thing is entirely up to you.
If I bore myself, I will do the same. Deal?
Some useful terms
Here are some words and phrases I’ll be using as we voyage into Meeting Land and their meanings.
‘Meetings’
I am not going to restrict the book to formal meetings of eight or so people sitting around a big wooden desk. We’ll look at meetings as small as two and as large as 1500. We’ll focus on live meetings but include virtual ones. A lot of my clients are wrestling with virtual meetings currently. The bottom line is that everything you need to do for a live meeting, you need to do even more for a virtual one.
‘Your meetings’
When I say ‘your’ meetings I am including those you lead and those you attend. When we look at them from the highest level (and we will) they are indeed all ‘your’ meetings – whether they feel like it or not.
‘They’
‘They’ are the people who are causing the problems. They are not going to read this book, which is why you will have to do it for them. They sat in the middle rows at school and were proud of their pencil cases. They are the boring folk. Not us. Let’s keep it that way.
‘Clients’
The ideas in this book are based on many years working with businesses around the world. I have mentioned some people by their real names. Others I have disguised, as they are still operating as meeting revolutionaries in their organisations and I don’t want to blow their cover. I will just refer to them by their first name and role, for example Ron the Consultant or Dominique the CEO. You are also going to be hearing from people outside business like Dame Barbara Stocking, the Head of Oxfam UK, the environmentalist Ashok Khosla, the scholar and activist Jim Garrison and others. These are people who have a stake in real meetings that goes beyond business and out into the wider world.
‘Tried and tested techniques’
All the tips, tricks and tools I offer in this book have been rigorously tested in the field. Well, nearly all. I couldn’t help myself. I have included some which have never been tried and could explode without warning. I know that won’t bother an adventurer like you. Indeed, I am hoping you are going to go further than I have, being more daring and experimental. Just let me know what you discover on your journey. I’ll be waiting in keen anticipation for your report on [email protected].
‘Business’
I refer a lot to business in this book, but that doesn’t mean we need to restrict ourselves to commerce. The work here can be and has been applied to public sector organisations, government, NGOs and even schools. Will There Be Donuts? is relevant wherever two or more people are meeting together in a world that’s getting busier by the day. In writing the book I assumed that people in business also have home lives (I know that’s a bit of a bold assumption) and will find a lot of these techniques useful in personal life as well.
‘The Arts’
You’ll see I often refer to the Arts or Performing Arts. This is the point where I have to put my hand up (you can’t see me, but it really is up) and confess I am a business outsider. That’s probably why people call me into their businesses. My background is the Arts. All my life I have been involved (as performer, director, writer, producer) in creating experiences for people in music, theatre, opera, TV and film.
I didn’t expect to be working in the business world, and if one of the world’s leading consulting companies hadn’t asked me to help them stage a spectacular operatic team-building experience in the early nineties (more of that later), I might not have been.
I have spent a couple of decades wandering round in a world I wasn’t trained to understand and have discovered how wonderful it is to be an outsider on the inside. It allows you to be permanently puzzled about why perfectly normal people behave in such peculiar ways when they are at work.
People ask me, ‘When did you leave the performing arts?’ and I answer that I didn’t. To me businesses are theatre and meetings are their stage. Some of the companies I know are every bit as dramatic and bloody as the schlockiest opera. Businesses run on creativity. Creative ventures need to be businesslike. Shakespeare, remember, was an astute businessman and property magnate. The worlds may appear very different, but their drives are often the same.
Stick Together
In the quintessential heist film Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Danny (George Clooney) asks Rusty, the fixer character played by Brad Pitt, what he thinks is required to pull off the impossible casino robbery. Brad doesn’t answer what, but who. ‘Off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking at a Boeski, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.’
The lesson is simple. If you are attempting something ambitious – and changing meeting culture is definitely that – then you need a diverse crew that’s as determined (or insane) as you are. ‘Find hungry Samurai,’ as they say in Kurosawa’s film The Seven Samurai.
Dorothy needed the Tin Man, Scarecrow, Lion, assorted munchkins, a couple of fairies and a small dog to make it to Oz. Gather some like-spirited but unlike-minded allies to join you on the adventure. People who share your irritation at the way meetings are held currently and who think sufficiently differently from you to make sure you come up with some unusual solutions.
Also, if you are in a corporate setting and you are not in a leadership position, ideally you should enrol someone who is, to provide a ‘licence to operate’ and some high-level ‘air cover’ for when you do. I encourage clients to put a ‘dotted line’ around a few months during which people have permission to try new things and, if necessary, make mistakes without reprisal.
This doesn’t mean you can’t operate solo, but all good 007s have their Ms to watch their backs and their Qs to provide them with the baddy-neutralising pen and amphibious getaway car.
What you should bring with you
In the saddle bag of the Real Meeting revolutionary you won’t find posters, HR charts or books on management. They are not interested in knowing about real meetings. They are determined to have them.
I like to recommend that every self-respecting Real Meeting-ista carries the following must-have pieces of equipment:
You need something as dramatic as a chainsaw to slice through the dense undergrowth of ‘nearly meetings’ and clear a giant hole to let the light in. Secateurs are essential to shape and refine the few meetings you actually do have. The bad meeting habits of your colleagues are hard as concrete and have deep foundations. You’ll need something as strong as Semtex to detonate those. And you need a glue gun to make sure the changes you make in meeting practice actually stick.
Clients who knew I was writing this book wanted me to pass on a couple of additional must-have items; this time not metaphorical