Boring Meetings Suck

Maybe we are starting to get through...to some anyway

2009-06-18T08:47:00.002-05:00

An email I received yesterday - that I thought worthy to share as a smile came across my face as I read it....

Excerpt:

"They took me through 4.5 hours of interviews with 9 people and ended it with me giving them a presentation. I dutifully had printed out 9 copies of riveting PowerPoint to aid me in my spiel but when I went to get them out the CEO started laughing noticeably. They had apparently just had a training session / meeting on doing meetings without PowerPoint :) I promptly shoved the copies back in my folder, proceeded to drop your name and book and let them know you were available for corporate events. I then proceeded to lead a "discussion" for the next 30 minutes."

I'm sorry the CEO noticeably laughed, but glad he knew of the book and their organization had made some change in the engagement factor of their meetings.

Thank you for sharing "interviewee."

Jon
Bore No More!

I Will Survive (your horrid presentation)

2009-04-27T10:35:00.003-05:00

Taking four cues from the Gloria Gaynor disco hit, @SlideMagnet has posted an "I will Surviv(al)" guide for your unfortunate audience members.

Go Walk Out the Door
That's right... it's an option. And if you can't leave, sit close to the exit and take a few 'breaks' during the boring meeting.

Just Turn It Around Now
Being in the audience doesn't mean you're powerless to affect the Powerpoint presentaiton from Hell. If the presenter gets off topic, asking a question designed to get the group back on track will bring you the gratitude of all in attendance.

Hold Your Head Up High
Some presenters are frightened to speak in front of groups. Giving the speaker your full attention, and practicing active listening techniques such as eye contact, smiling, and nodding can help both you AND the speaker survive this session.

Learn How to Carry On
When all else fails, you've probably got a dozen other projects that would benefit from using this time to organize your thoughts, and create action lists. As long as you can pull this off with the presenter (or your boss) thinking that you're diligently creating notes on the materials being presented, you will survive this boring meeting to inevitably be able to attend more boring meetings in the future.

I've only paraphrased the great tips from SlideMagnet. Do yourself a favor and click here to read the entire article.

Seth Godin's Meeting Guarantee

2009-03-26T11:53:00.002-05:00

Seth Godin shares nine ways to get serious about your business meeting problems, getting things done, and saving time. He's offered a full refund if not fully satisfied with the results. ;)

My favorites...
#1: All problems aren't the same, so why are all meetings the same?

#4: Remove all the chairs from the meeting room.

#6: Use an egg timer. Once it goes off, the meeting is over!

#9: If you're not adding value to the meeting -- LEAVE. You can always read the meeting summary later.

Click here for the full list of Seth's insights.

Using your Phone, PDA, Blackberry to take notes...? We want to hear from you.

2009-02-25T08:49:00.003-05:00

It's interesting how things change in just a couple years since the first edition of Boring Meetings Suck was released. I find it fascinating to review and even use some of the social media applications and technologies that have gone mainstream in use of the organization, documentation and distribution of information related to our still non-stop internal meetings.

so that being said, here's what I would be interested in knowing from you all.

Have you ever used your phone, blackberry, PDA or other handheld device to take notes instead of using the "old fashioned" pen and paper?

Here's a link to the poll so you can track the results. http://polls.linkedin.com/p/24214/vejtx

Thanks for sharing your insight!

Jon Petz
Co-Author

Seth Godin Thinks You're Boring, Too.

2009-01-15T08:03:00.003-05:00

Seth says in his blog post today: "If people aren't discussing your products, your services, your cause, your movement or your career, there's a reason. The reason is that you're boring."

How do you get UN-boring?
Well, if we're talking Boring Meetings, you need to buy a copy of our book . If it's something else, the solution is neither as quick, nor as easy, nor as inexpensive as buying a book (even our book.)

Seth says: "You don't get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong."

Get more of Seth's sage advice in his interview with Ducttape Marketing guru John Jantsch (he's never boring.)

Boring Meeting Activities Wiki

2009-01-14T14:22:00.003-05:00

Someone built a wiki page that collects ideas on things to do while sitting in a boring meeting.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ActivitiesForBoringMeetings

I wonder where they found the time to build it... using the time spent sitting in boring meetings perhaps???

PowerPoint Lessons

2008-11-10T01:18:00.002-05:00

This guy's PowerPoint skills are so bad, he took a presentation on tour and became a successful comedian!

Don McMillan provides a humorous (and yet insightful) presentation on how people should NOT be using PowerPoint.

Can Boring be Good for You?

2008-05-30T10:49:00.002-05:00

It can be according to CNBC.com Managing Editor Allen Wastler! In his article "Read What's Boring... It's Good For You" Wastler makes this comment: "People generally don't read boring stuff, even though they should."

The article is about boring emails and legal disclaimers that would better educate and advise people if they read them (but they don't.) People simply don't read these things completely because disclaimers seem to be a standard case of jumbled jargon intended to cover someone's ass and prevent them from being sued, and email warnings blend into the billion other email meesages we receive, all of which purport to be just as import to our well being as the one Wastler mentions in his aticle.

The entire time I'm reading the article, the solution is apparent and my inner voice is screaming it at the top if its inner lung -- stop making the information boring!

Finally, at the end of the article (good thing it wasn't so boring that I stopped reading it!) Wastler says "Maybe if we spruced disclaimers up, more people would read them..." and my inner voice says, "By Jove, I think he's got it!" (apparently my inner voice speaks a lot like Henry Higgins), but, alas, so close to the epiphany and then he shrinks away -- "And if we spruced up tech emails, people would read those too? Okay, I'm dreaming."

So close... so close...

If you want to check out a pretty cool disclaimer, look at the bottom of any product created by sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer. His fineprint (perhaps we should rename it "funprint") states: "Don't even think about reproducing this document without written permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer, Inc."

Since I am an official "Gitomer Groupie" I stole (ahem, paid homage to) Gitomer's 'funprint' by adding some to the Boring Meetings Suck website -- just scroll to the bottom of the page to see what I mean...

How to Fix a Broken Meeting

2008-05-04T08:14:00.003-05:00

Business Week tells the story of Perry Klebahn, the man who's taken over as CEO of ailing bag company Timbuk2. He wanted to keep the 70 employees of the San Francisco company informed and engaged, but what he'd hoped would be an open forum for discussion turned into an awkward weekly event...

Klebahn was a graduate of Stanford's product design program and a part-time professor there since 1996. He's friends with two professors who were teaching a course about applying design principles to business processes or systems. The idea was to treat an organization as a prototype to be refined and improved. The professors -- Robert Sutton, an expert in organizational behavior and author of, most recently, The No Asshole Rule, and Debra Dunn, a 22-year veteran of Hewlett-Packard who held leadership positions in the marketing, manufacturing, and human resources divisions before moving to corporate HQ -- approached Klebahn about a short, Timbuk2-based project for the class and homed in on the meeting as the right-sized problem. It was, says Dunn, "small enough for students to wrap their arms around and large enough that it would make a significant impact. Meetings have tremendous symbolic power."

In February 2008 Sutton and Dunn took some students to observe a company meeting at Timbuk2. Most people in the meeting were standing or sitting on the floor. Sutton says, "The sun was glaring through the windows, forcing many to shield their eyes. You couldn't tell who was in charge. Some people were called on to give status reports didn't have anything to report... one person fell asleep. The meeting was broken."

Two weeks after the class had observed the meeting, Klebahn and his management team met with the students to hear their proposed solutions, most of which focused on giving employees more control and a greater sense of ownership of the meeting.

Click here for a complete list of the solutions the team developed for Timbuk2.

Planning is Key to Sucking Less

2008-04-08T11:36:00.004-05:00

If you use my friend Tom Terez's new meeting agenda planner, perhaps your meetings won't suck quite so much.

The PDF form provides a simple framework for all the key elements of a productive meeting:

Purpose
Roles
Agenda items
Time frames
Decisions
Next steps
...and more

And if you use the quick-check assessment tool to evaluate and improve the overall meeting process, your next meeting will suck even LESS.

The best part is that Tom has posted the agenda planning tool online, and it's free for all to share. Click here to get your copy.

Boring Meetings as "Social Theater?"

2008-03-22T17:03:00.002-05:00

Here's a unique view on Boring Meetings...

The author feels that attending meetings offers the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and participate in what he has termed "social theater."

I'm not certain that I agree with his premise, but I have hope for him -- he also suggests in the article that speakers in these meeting should have to pay their audience by the minute.

No Explanation Needed

2008-02-29T14:47:00.003-05:00

Bored Workers are Big Threat

2008-02-27T15:41:00.005-05:00

ManageSmarter.com reports that a recent study by Sirota Survey Intelligence found that bored workers are a bigger threat to company morale than stressed-out and over-worked employees.

"Feeling overworked -- a condition that could lead to job burnout -- is far more prevalent than feeling bored, yet both have harmful effects on employees and their companies," says Douglas Klein, president of Sirota. "Interestingly, being bored has far more serious consequences for an organization than being overworked."

What Ticks Us Off At Meetings

2008-02-06T00:59:00.000-05:00

Monday's USAToday.com chart and poll focused on what bugs us most about meetings. The bulk of those surveyed (27%) said that disorganized meetings which seemed to have no purpose or agenda ticked them off most. Second place went to people who Interrupt in meetings (17%) and the third most bothersome thing in meetings were Nappers (16%).

The results from the poll (at the time of this writing) asking how readers would describe meetings in their own workplace showed the following:
34% felt meetings were too unfocused
30% thought meetings were too long
30% thought meetings were irrelevant to day-to-day tasks
and a whopping 6% thought their meetings were perfect in every way.

BMS Note: Apparently 6% of the people taking the poll were folks who loved to hold boring meetings.

BestIdeas for Meetings

2008-01-26T13:01:00.001-05:00

The email newsletter for Best100Ideas.com has published a list of best ideas for managing meetings. Although a couple of the ideas sound very similar to concepts shared in my book, Boring Meetings Suck, I especially like their concept of the Three Sentences Meeting...

Three Sentences Meetings:
Set a rule for a specific type of meetings in which each participant may say only three sentences during the entire meeting. This would make people concentrate on the most important messages they feel most strongly about in the meeting. A Three Sentence Meeting would be short and to the point. You should send required data or a list of major issues in advance, thus allowing people to express their major insights, reservations, suggestions and positions in those three sentences.

Three Sentences Meetings are certainly a way to cut the amount of hot air released in a conference room, but if you're sending pre-meeting data and the topic agenda to the group via email, why not simply have everyone hit REPLAY TO ALL and write their three sentences in an email? This way you could avoid another boring meeting altogether.

Best100Ideas.com offers a lot of valuable ideas, and they even have an eBook of 100 Creative Presentation Ideas. Definitely worth a look.

Time Management Through More Meetings

2007-12-17T13:46:00.000-05:00

Apparently the Department of Boring Meetings thinks there is a better way to organize the workday -- and they want to have some meetings to discuss it.

But don't worry, there are doughnuts for the team with the best ideas.
Or muffins. We can totally do muffins...

From the memo:
So let's plan to have a few ad hoc powwows next week to discuss the meeting situation, vis-a-vis the workplace. The prioritized goal of these meetings will be to draw up a comprehensive road map for what we should be aiming for while avoiding the stumbling blocks we've encountered in the past. The point here is to take a step back and reevaluate how we do things here, on a macro level.

Please bring a minimum of 15 topics to discuss, with a focus on "how to minimize wasted work." Of course, more ideas are always welcome. We'll be going through these point-by-point and selecting the top 20 to be discussed at next week's Productivity Enhancement off-site sit-down.

Once we've highlighted a list of problems, we're going to break up into smaller groups to tackle inter-group communication problems and idea bottlenecking, and then hopefully do some real blue-sky thinking. These groups will spend the majority of Thursday's retreat developing proactive steps that they, as a group or as individuals, can implement post facto. These groups will be called "solution-innovators" (SI for short) and each SI will meet every other week to track overall progress and facilitate productivity improvements.

I'll be floating between the two groups to gauge the temperature of the room.

The team that comes up with the best solutions at the end of each week will be rewarded with doughnuts. So by Wednesday at noon please e-mail me your top five doughnut preferences so we can have a good selection for the winners. Or, if you'd rather have muffins, we can do muffins. Totally up to you.

Full article at TheOnion.com

Get Me Out Of Here!

2007-12-12T11:30:00.000-05:00

Wish you could get out of those boring meetings?

These guys can help...

Power Points

2007-11-20T17:42:00.000-05:00

Great find via Mike Santoro's "Perfect Pitch" blog on the Duct Tape Marketing Channel.

| View | Upload your own

Unbearable Meetings

2007-10-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

A recent Inc.com article shares study findings on why meetings are just so darn unbearable!

A new "Ouch Point" study by Opinion Research USA measured the tolerance thresholds of U.S. workers at business meetings. Topping the list as the biggest frustration for meeting attendees?

Disorganization.
The study polled 1,037 workers, and 27% ranked disorganized, rambling meetings as the top frustration.

Other findings...

17% said they were annoyed by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings
9% said they were bothered by co-workers nodding off
Only 5% said they were frustrated by BlackBerry-checking email hounds
16% cited cell-phone interruptions
6% found meetings without refreshments more annoying than the BlackBerry button-pushers.
8% found meetings without bathroom breaks unbearable
5% were distracted by people leaving the meeting early or arriving late.
4% of respondents said they were most frustrated by meetings that start late and those that end without distributing a written recap.

"If you're asking somebody to participate in a meeting, it has to be, from their perception, worth it to invest the time," said Jeff Resnick, president of Opinion Research USA. "If you are someone calling the meeting, organize it, control everyone during the meeting, and make sure the people there aren't wasting their time."

In time-compressed work environments, where so much focus is placed on productivity, "time spent in meetings that's not considered productive is certainly not helpful."

Amen, brother.

Pecha Kucha: 20-Slides 20-Seconds

2007-09-21T14:15:00.000-05:00

Favorite author Dan Pink explains a new concept in PowerPoint presenting initiated by two Tokyo-based architects who've turned the process into a competive art form.

The rules are simple: 20 slides -- 20 seconds each.
Take 6 minutes and 40 seconds to relate your message, then sit down and shut-up.

Think how much more efficient your meeting would be if everyone who needed to speak would adhere to this simple rule.

Pecha Kucha.
Live it, learn it, love it.

Trust your instincts: have shorter meetings

2007-09-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

Most people think of a "snap judgement" as a bad thing, but according to researchers quick decisions might be best.

From the article...
Study participants were asked to identify an oddly rotated symbol on a screen of more than 650 identical symbols. Those who made quick, instinctive decisions did better at correctly identifying the symbol than those who gave a longer, more thought out answer.

"This finding seems counter-intuitive," said Li Zhaoping of the University College London, one of the authors of the study published online in the journal Current Biology. "You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think."

When given time to engage the higher-level processes of the conscious mind, participants guessed wrong because their conscious brain overrode the decision of the lower-level subconscious.

We all "know" what to do -- it's just that few of us trust ourselves to just DO it without peer confirmation that we won't be "wrong" or ridiculed for our actions. According to this study, your gut-instinct is going to be right most of the time anyway so why not skip the decision-stalling meetings and just move forward?

Get more details here...

Boring Training Sucks

2007-08-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

A new article on ManageSmarter speaks to the potentially fatal effects of boring training films in a piece titled "Beyond Death by Video."

From the article...

It's every trainee's worst nightmare. You report for your first day on the job and spend the next eight hours holed up in a room watching dull-as-dirt new-hire training videos.

Even worse, much of the training content is so generic and rudimentary that it doesn’t come close to preparing you for the real-life challenges you'll face in the field.

Unfortunately, for most new hires entering the security-guard services
industry, "death by training video" is an all-too-common scenario...

Read the rest by clicking HERE.

Big Ideas From Bad Meetings

2007-07-22T15:10:00.000-05:00

Big ideas can spring forth from bad meetings.
Read the article below and see what you think...

Idea Born Out of A Failure
Thirteen Club Originated as Result of Poor Meeting.
By C. A. Hanson.

Canton, OH., May 23. -- "Failure" is the most dreaded word in the English language, yet I have just witnessed the birth of an idea growing out of a failure -- an idea that promises success to thousands of people.

Napoleon Hill of Cleveland was billed to speak at Canton, O. The lecture had been well advertised. This coupled with the fact that Mr. Hill is well and favorably known in Canton, practically insured a large audience.

But when he arrived at the public hall he found an audience of only 13 people. . . .

On his way back to the hotel Mr. Hill's mind began to work . .

"Only 13 people present!" he said to himself. "Well, that is a lucky number. The greatest real estate transaction on earth began with 13 units -- the 13 colonies out of which the United States grew. Furthermore, the greatest power for good on this earth began with an original group of 13 people -- the master and his 12 disciples.

By the time Mr. Hill arrived at his hotel the Thirteen club had been born in his mind. A few minutes later, when I arrived at his room with a couple of friends who had been disappointed at not hearing him speak, he began to unfold his plan for the organization of the first Thirteen club.

The two friends who were present immediately made application for membership in the first Thirteen club. Moreover, they promised to go out and bring in the other 11 necessary for the first club. Before the following night the entire membership had been recruited.

Success Born From Failure.
Napoleon Hill is the author of the Law of Success course. Out of more than 25 years of struggle, study and experimentation Napoleon Hill has discovered that the most profitable and enduring lessons come from failure and mistakes. He contends that there is no such thing as failure -- that there is, however, temporary defeat, and, that such defeat teaches lessons which most men would learn in no other way.

A class of 50 selected men and women is to be trained immediately, as teachers of the 15 laws of success, and as directors of Thirteen clubs. These teachers will be personally trained by the founder of the clubs, Napoleon Hill, who will devote the entire summer to that work. Those who have had experience as teachers in the public schools and colleges will be selected for this work, wherever possible.

Rules to Be Followed:
Each member of the club must comply with the following program:

Take and faithfully observe a pledge to form the habit of always rendering more service and better service than that for which he or she is paid.
Master and apply in his or her daily work, the 15 laws of success.
Co-operate with the others members of the club in assisting them in the application of the 15 laws of success in their daily work.
Start a savings account and add to it a certain definite pro rata of all earnings each week, this account not to be withdrawn for a period of five years.
Adopt and follow a personal budget system of control over expenditures.
Submit to a personal analysis every six months for the purpose of determining whether the member is advancing, standing still or going backward. Only those who show continuous growth, through assimilation of the club's educational program, may remain in the club.
Carry life insurance, in some approved company, in proportion to earning capacity.
Form a habit of prayer, and resort to that habit in whatever manner and at such times as the member may prefer.
Choose a definite purpose as a life work and create a definite plan for the achievement of that purpose.
Follow a program of collateral reading of books on subjects connected with the member's definite purpose in life, thereby taking advantage of that which others have discovered relating to that purpose.
Introduce at least one other person for membership in the Thirteen club movement, thereby rendering to another the privilege of the benefits to be derived from the club.
Read Emerson's essay on the law of compensation once every six months.
Adopt the golden rule philosophy as the basis of all business and professional transactions.

Cleveland Is Headquarters.
A plan is now under way for the organization of 100 Thirteen clubs in the city of Cleveland. It is proposed that at least one such club shall be organized and put into action in each business or industrial plant in the city where as many as 13 people are employed.

A national employment bureau will be operated from the club headquarters, in Cleveland, with the object of assisting all members, wherever located, in marketing their services to best advantage, and in helping find suitable employees.

Membership in the Thirteen club is open only to those who come recommended by some other member. Each member has the privilege of selecting one other member providing the selection meets with the approval of the entire membership.

No one may long remain a member of the club who comes in with the idea of getting without giving. To remain a member of the club every member must place the rendering of useful service to others above the desire for personal aggrandizement.

Source:
The Cleveland Times
May 31, 1925
Page 10

Reprinted from the email newsletter:
Napoleon Hill Yesterday & Today
Issue 26

Make Your Meetings Mobile

2007-07-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across a creative new business on the web the other day -- a company that markets t-shirts with text message autoresponders.

You create a shirt on the site, choose a keyword, program your text-back response, and post your shirt on the site.

Aside from being a very cool concept, I also believe this product could qualify as a MSRD (Meeting Suckification Reduction Device) in the next edition of Boring Meetings Suck.

The website (Reactees.com) offers the ability for people to "subscribe" to individual shirts -- meaning the shirt's owner can broadcast messages to anyone who elects to receive ongoing communiques. If applied to the goal of ending Boring Meetings that Suck -- you could have a "shirt" created for every project-based committee on which you serve. Instead of creating yet another meeting for a project update, you could simply "text-in" for the latest update, or the committee's chairperson could broadcast the most recent milestone to the subscribers.

Envision creating a shirt that says "Project Status? Text 4UPDATE to 41411 for details." Anyone could get an update on your project at anytime. Everyone could have a personalized version (Don's Project, Jon's Project, etc.) and the update keyword could remain the same, with the status messages changing for the current project. The current limitation of 120 characters forces one's updates to remain pithy, and while the kernel of this idea began with a t-shirt, nothing says it has to remain a t-shirt. Add the message to your email sig line, or post it as a message on your blog or company's intranet site.

As with most good ideas -- the possibilities are endless. How can YOU apply this concept to reduce your own meeting suckification?

Dumping PowerPoint

2007-05-29T11:29:00.000-05:00

Robert Middleton over at the Action Plan Marketing Blog just posted a great entry on why you should stop using PowerPoint.

Best quote from the post? Robert tried to explain one of the reasons people use the PPT crutch:
"Sure you'll bore everyone to death, but you won't look bad doing it."

His primary point of the article is that a presentation needs to be dynamic, engaging, entertaining, and exciting. If it's not -- PowerPoint isn't going to save you, or make your audience feel any more involved.

If anything, dimming the lights for your silly slideshow will simply make it easier for them to slip into a coma.

Read the entire post here.