David Pearl - Will there be Donuts? - Start a business revolution one meeting at a time

Clients who knew I was writing this book wanted me to pass on a couple of additional must-have items; this time not metaphorical ones.

• Rubber Chicken

Virginie was so fed up with people arriving late at her meetings she borrowed a large plastic chicken toy from her pet dog and presented it to the colleague who arrived last. The team loved the idea and a new ritual was born. Today any team member who dares to arrive after the agreed start time has to keep the chicken prominently on their office desk until the next monthly meeting as a silent and potent mark of public shame. It’s a playful and effective deterrent.

• Plastic Water Bottle (empty!)

Recycling-minded companies are finding all sorts of uses for discarded plastic water bottles: waterproof jackets, jewelry, solar heating panels, insulation, desk tidies. Alain and Bill, two resourceful clients who both have a scientific background, discovered a wonderful new application of the empty water bottle to improve attention in meetings, as Bill explained:

Alain always used to punch me in the arm when I lost attention and drifted off into working on my laptop. And I used to return the favor. But Alain is a big fellow and a punch from him really used to hurt. One day I had just finished drinking a bottle of water and saw him on his BlackBerry, and before I thought about it I bounced the empty bottle off his head. It was just as effective as the punch and much less effortful for both of us. And it’s catching on. Last week Martine, another colleague, launched one across the room at Francesca who was tapping away at SameTime. Now when we meet as a leadership team we always make sure we have an empty water bottle to hand.

I was at dinner in Italy with a career U.S. diplomat. As you might expect from someone who has being doing that job for 20 years, he was a charming, engaging, and calm individual. Until I mentioned I was writing this book.

“Meetings! Meetings have been the bane of my career. They are pointless! A complete waste of time!!” He was standing by this point and, I swear, waving a bread stick. “I say NO to all meetings now. All except one. I do one meeting a week just to remind myself why I don’t go to any others!!!”

He eventually calmed down, but when I left the dinner he took me to one side. “Good luck,” he said, like he was sending me into Da-Nang on a one-way mission. “You’re going to need it.”

He does have a point. If you really mean to change the way you meet, you are going to be messing with the culture of the business and the deep-seated habits of its employees. You’re going to discover that very often the meetings are not the problem, they are a symptom of the problem. You are going to be upsetting the status quo. It could get messy.

Great meetings are a noble destination. The question is, are you prepared to do what it takes to get there? [CUE: stirring action movie soundtrack with snare drums and lone bugle. Distant at first but building to the end of this chapter.]

We’re not looking for trainers (training coming as it does from the Latin to drag) but for undercover agents of change.

This isn’t about moving the paper clips around. It’s about setting off a meeting revolution in your business. And that’s going to need meeting revolutionaries. We are looking for people who want to make a difference and understand you may need to be a little unorthodox to achieve that. It’s for people who want to see a real difference in their meetings and for that effect to last. (How am I doing in enrolling you, by the way? This wouldn’t be a bad way to set intent and engage people at the beginning of a meeting. Particularly if you add a warning …)

But, before you volunteer, there’s something you should know. It’s a dangerous world out there in Nearly Meeting Land. The inhabitants don’t like to be pushed around. They’ll just push back. This is not for the shy or the unadventurous! You’re going to have to be missionary, secret agent, psychologist, and aid worker rolled into one.

Before you sign up, ask yourself: are you the sort of person who could …

• Operate in disguise, changing who you appear to be to suit different meeting situations? This could also include deep deception or what we call “going native,” pretending to be one of the boring people to gain their trust.

• Become an expert in forgery, quickly separating valuable meetings from counterfeit ones?

• Hijack meetings from individuals who don’t know how to lead them as well as setting off the occasional full-scale mutiny to regain control when the leadership has gone to sleep?

• Set up revolutionary cells, operating under new meeting rules without permission or fear?

• Defuse unexploded bombs of emotion which lie under the surface of even polite meetings and also setting off the occasional controlled detonation?

• Practice biological warfare, releasing viruses that make your colleagues allergic to unhealthy practices and create effective new addictions to replace their current ones?

• Be bad. Nothing is going to change unless you are prepared to misbehave a little. At school you’d be punished for being a disruptive influence, here it’s an entry requirement. But being bad also means not looking good. Are you willing to try something new and get it wrong? I ask because a lot of us would do anything rather than appear fallible, and even the toughest meeting revolutionaries can unravel when their ego is threatened. Mistakes are inevitable if you really commit to doing things differently. Can you handle that and learn from them?

And, finally, could you

• Be ruthless, mercilessly killing off “nearly” meetings you don’t need? You’ll be brutally hacking into the undergrowth of regular meetings choking your day. And culling the cute, furry little ad hoc meetings that look up with those puppy eyes and say, “Take me home, I won’t take up much time and I’ll make you feel soooo important.”

If you can answer yes to these questions, then welcome to the rest of the book. Please, stand and repeat after me the motto of the Guild of Meeting Mischief Makers. “Finis ad Fastidium!” †That’s “Bore No More,” to you and me.

Remember, this isn’t a book about boring meetings and whether you want to have them. It’s a book about boring lives and whether you want to live one.

*Despite our title I’m not sure I’d recommend a donut as a meeting snack. As the New York Obesity Research Center puts it, “The average donut is nothing more than refined sugar and flour, artificial flavors and partially hydrogenated oil that’s loaded with trans fats. When it comes to health, the only thing good about them is the hole.”

†Some clients do prefer the alternative Latin motto which goes: “Quaerimus Et Si Non Invenio Facimus Malum” (we go looking for trouble—and if we don’t find any, we make some) but it’s harder to print on a T-shirt.

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