Patrick M. Lencioni - Death by meeting: a leadership fable ... about solving the most painful problem in business

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Table of Contents

Also by Patrick Lencioni

Leadership Fables

The Five Temptations of a CEO
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job

Field Guide

Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team

For my extraordinary wife, Laura, for your unwavering confidence and optimism.

INTRODUCTION

If I didnt have to go to meetings, Id like my job a lot more.

Its a remark Ive heard from many of the leaders Ive worked with over the years. I used to think that it was understandableeven humorousbut Ive come to the conclusion that its actually a sad comment on the state of our business culture.

Imagine hearing a surgeon saying to a nurse before surgery: If I didnt have to operate on people, I might actually like this job. Or a symphony conductor preparing for a performance: If it werent for these concerts, I would enjoy my work more. Or even a professional baseball player: Id love my job if I didnt have to play in these games.

Ridiculous, right? But thats exactly what were doing when we lament our meetings.

Think about it this way. For those of us who lead and manage organizations, meetings are pretty much what we do. After all, were not paid for doing anything exceedingly tangible or physical, like delivering babies or kicking field goals or doing stand-up comedy. Whether we like it or not, meetings are the closest thing to an operating room, a playing field, or a stage that we have.

And yet most of us hate them. We complain about, try to avoid, and long for the end of meetings, even when were running the darn things! How pathetic is it that we have come to accept that the activity most central to the running of our organizations is inherently painful and unproductive?

All of this is an unnecessary shame because meetings are critical. They are where presidential cabinets discuss whether or not to go to war; where governors and their aides debate the merits of raising or lowering taxes; where CEOs and their staffs consider the decision to launch a brand, introduce a product, or close a factory.

And so my question is this: If we hate meetings, can we be making good decisions and successfully leading our organizations? I dont think so. There is simply no substitute for a good meetinga dynamic, passionate, and focused engagementwhen it comes to extracting the collective wisdom of a team. The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.

But there is hope. By taking a contrarian, nontraditional view of meetings, and following a few specific guidelines that have nothing to do with video-conferencing, interactive software, or Roberts Rules of Order, we can transform what is now painful and tedious into something productive, compelling, and even energizing. In the process, we can also differentiate ourselves from our competitors who continue to waste time, energy, and enthusiasm lamenting the drudgery of meetings.

To illustrate how this can be accomplished, Ive written a fictional story about an executive in a unique struggle with meetings. Following the story is a practical description of my suggestions for implementing these ideas in your organization.

Good luck as you work to make your meetings more effective, and restore some of the passion that you and your people deserve.

The Fable

PREVIEW

Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life. Not when he was a sixteen-year-old preparing to speak at his fathers funeral. Not before he proposed marriage to his wife. Not when he stood over a nine-foot putt that would win or lose the biggest golf tournament of his career.

No, this was the moment. In just ten minutes The Meeting would begin, and Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch. For a moment he thought he was going to be physically ill.

How could my life have unraveled so quickly? he wondered.

PART ONE

Flashback

THE MAN

Most of his employees would describe Casey as an extraordinary manbut just an ordinary CEO.

On a personal level, they genuinely liked their leader. Casey was a devoted husband, a loving father to his four children, a committed parishioner at Sacred Heart Church, and a helpful friend and neighbor. It was almost impossible not to likeeven admirethe man.

Which made his limitation as a leader all the more mystifying.

HIS STORY

The McDaniel family had lived modestly in Carmel for the past fifty years, and Casey grew up on or around the many golf courses in the area, usually as a caddy or gardener. His affinity for golf was matched only by his love for computers, so he left home after high school to attend the University of Arizona on a golf scholarship, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science. Four years later he graduated toward the middle of his academic class, but at the top of the Pac-10 Conference in golf.

The lure of joining the PGA Tour, and someday playing back home at Pebble Beach in front of friends and family, was too much for Casey to resist. So he joined a qualifying tour where he quickly became one of the more popular players on the circuit with his quiet humor and generosity toward any fellow golfers who needed a little advice about their stroke.

Over the course of the next five years, Casey won a few more than his share of second-tier tournaments and earned enough money to keep his head far above water. But just as he was about to break through to the big tour, he developed a chronic case of what golfers call the yipsan almost clinical disorder that makes it difficult to remain steady while in the act of putting. Plenty of promising players had their careers cut short by the pseudo-psychological yips, and Casey reluctantly counted himself among them.

Never one to let disappointment keep him down for too long, Casey returned home with a new sense of purposeand an idea. In a matter of months, he got married, bought a tiny bungalow with the earnings he had saved, hired two local programmers, and began hacking away at what he believed would be the most realistic golf video game that the market had ever seen.

The initial results would wildly exceed even his expectations.

BREAK

Within two years of launching his company, Yip Software, Casey released his first product, which immediately set the standard for realism in all sports-related games. Because of his in-depth background in the sport, the game reflected deep knowledge of many of the subtle aspects of actual golf venues, including of course, the putting greens.

Almost immediately the game became a favorite of the most important focus group of customers imaginable: golfers themselves.

Because he had become close friends with many players who were now on the tour, Casey was able to arrange inexpensive but effective sponsorship deals with a few of the better young players. But it was a purely accidental occurrence that propelled Yips success beyond being a niche video game and onto the pages of

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